The Woodcock Hill Optical Telegraph

Following the French Revolution Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-appointed Emperor of the French, used his military skills in an attempt to rule all of Europe. The Royal Navy took control of the seas and thwarted his attempts to invade England. In the days before electricity the only way to send messages long distances was by rider on horesback. It was a day's ride from Portsmouth to London.  In 1797 Lord George Murray invented an Optical Telegraph that consisted of six shutters that could be individually opened and closed to make 64 different patterns. The entire alphabet could be coded. Spare patterns were used to represent whole words or common phrases. Invasion was expected to occur in Kent and a line of telegraphs was built from Deal to London, shortly followed by lines to the Naval bases in Portsmouth and Plymouth. The Great Yarmouth line that passed through Woodcock Hill came about in 1807 and was completed in 1808. Reasonable messages of about 50 letters in length could be sent in less than half an hour. The telegraph was expensive to operate as each station required four men. It could not work at night or in poor visibility. The Murray telegraphs were dismantled in 1814, but the main lines were quickly reopened when Napoleon reappeared in 1815. The Great Yarmouth line was not used again.  A semaphore system was used for many years, eventually giving way to the electrical telegraphs invented in 1837 by Wheatstone and in 1840 by Samuel Morse.