Col du Télégraphe

Col du Télégraphe was named after the Napoleonic telegraph station in the 19th century. It was not electric but used giant semaphore flags. An operator would pull levers to raise the flags that represented words or letters. Another operator would repeat the message he saw. A message could get from the southern Coast to Paris in less than a half hour. Think how amazing that would be before the electric telegraph was invented. How would you like the job to stare at this view waiting for the signals from the other mountaintops.Read more