zlacker

See "The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers"

https://www.amazon.com/dp/162040592X

Télégraphe Chappe was a semaphore system using flags. It was not an electrical telegraph, nor was it binary.

>>Walter+(OP)
It wasn't binary nor electrical, but it was already digital. Excluding it would be arbitrarily restrictive.

>>Walter+(OP)
It was optical. The modern internet mostly goes over optical fiber.

>>little+eF
Wouldn’t you also need to include the Ancient Greek phryctoriae military fire signalling system by that logic? It probably wasn’t the first, at that.

>>tim333+361
Also, most networks work with non-binary signals.

So in a way, it was closer to the current internet than an electrical telegraph (it was farther in other ways though).

>>DrPhis+4c1
It depends, how versatile was the Greek signaling system?

AFAIK the Télégraphe Chappe was the first general purpose telegraph able to send arbitrary messages, and was used by both the administration (for civilian as well as military purpose) and the private sector for business.

>>Walter+(OP)
"The Victorian Internet" gives it its due. And its drawbacks - didn't work at night or in bad weather. It was very expensive as it needed human operators and towers. Only simple messages could be transmitted. And it was slow.

Morse's electrical single wire telegraph was an instant success and quickly transformed the world. It wasn't an evolutionary advance over the Chappe, it was revolutionary.

There were also electric lights before Edison's lightbulb. But Edison invented a lightbulb that was simple, cheap, reliable, and it worked. Hence his bulb gets the nod. He nailed it.