Search results for "Chinese telegraphy"

A Telegraph for China: The Attempted Application of Caselli’s Pantelegraph to Transmit Chinese Characters, 1856−87

2016

In 1872 the Shanghai-based newspaper Shenbao described an invention by Giovanni Caselli that allowed the production of telegraphic messages containing Chinese characters, the ‘pantelegraph’, an ancestor of the fax, reproducing manu- scripts, images and symbols, and, as such, totally suitable for Chinese telegraphy. In 1863, the Italian inventor had shown his invention to a legation of Chinese diplomats in France, producing some impressive Chinese transmissions, the caselligrammi. The envoys reported this information back home, but for some reasons a commercial contact was only set twenty years later. Although in many ways this seemed to be a perfectly suitable solution for the telegraphic c…