FOUNDATIONS OF THE
DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING
The Old Testament has nothing to say about the origin of writing,
which seems to have been invented early in the fourth millennium B.C.
but it does assume writing on the part of Moses, who wrote the
Law not earlier than about 1450 B.C. Many earlier records of
writing have been discovered in various places. But, what was
the character of those records? Were they drawings? Symbols?
If so, what did they symbolize?
Three stages in the development of writing may be discerned:
pictograms, ideograms, and phonograms.
These were representations that long antedated the origin of
writing and played a role in the development of it. They were
actually crude pictures that represented objects such as the sun,
an old man, an eagle, an ox, a lion. As long as
pictograms represented nothing other than the objects themselves,
there was no difficulty in using them. However, as time passed
the use of pictures to depict ideas appeared, and
pictograms lost their dominant position in recorded communication.
Ideograms superseded pictograms.
They were pictures that actually represented ideas rather than
The Picture of
||an old man
Thus, a long stride toward writing was taken, although writing in
the modern sense was still a long way off. But ideograms,
actually a particular use of pictograms, were not the only
extension of pictograms.
Still another extension of pictograms, phonograms was
really representations of sounds rather than objects or
ideas. Thus, a representation of the sun might speak of a son
rather than the sun; a picture of a bear might be used to express
the verb 'to bear'; the picture of a bee to express the verb
'to be.' As a result, another step was taken in the direction
of written languages, but there was still a long succession of
events necessary before writing in the modern sense was achieved.
Ideographic and phonographic writings were later intermingled with
simple syllabic writing, and that with a more sophisticated system
wedge-shaped signs was used by the Sumerians.
Merrill F. Unger adequately summarizes the situation:
"Those who first attempted to reduce human speech to writing did not at
once perceive the chasm that separates the spoken words from the
characters in which they are symbolized. They wrote as they spoke in
unbroken succession, inscribing the letters in closest proximity to
each other, without separating them into words, much less into
sentences, paragraphs and chapters.
Although letters were used in writing by the time of Moses, they
were consonants only, as
vowels were added
much later. Hence, an unbroken succession of consonants
covering an entire tablet, later a scroll, and still later a
codex (sheets of papyrus bound into a book form) would appear
before the reader of a given text. Needless to say, even that
was still far from the modern concept of writing.
Although the witnesses to writing in antiquity are far from abundant,
there is sufficient evidence available to indicate that it was the
hallmark of cultural achievement. During the second millennium B.C.
there were several experiments that led to the development of the
alphabet and written documents. In Palestine itself there have been
very few documents that have survived from the pre-exilic period,
but the evidence from surrounding territories makes it reasonable to
assume that the Israelites shared in the act of writing even earlier than
the beginning of the Davidic kingdom.
Several lines of evidence may be called upon to witness to the fact
that writing was most certainly practiced by the Israelites prior to the
time of the Moabite Stone of Mesha, king of Moab, which dates from about
It was this item that was used by the late-nineteenth-century
higher critical writers, for example, Graf and Wellhausen, as the earliest
example of writing in Palestine.
Evidence from Mesopotamia
This dates from about 3500 B.C. and includes
cuneiform tablets of the Sumerians.
The successors to the Sumerians used
the latter's cuneiform script in developing their own individual
|From 3500 B.C.
||The above are antedated by many other
tablets, including some dating to about 3500 B.C. found in
Erech of Gen. 10:10) and Kish.
|From 2100 B.C
||Leonard Woolley discovered many temple
tablets in the ruins of ancient Ur of the Chaldees that date from
about 2100 B.C.
narrative found at Nippur dates from about 2100 B.C.
These confirm those found in Mesopotamia, and they
are dated about 3100 B.C.
|From 3100 B.C.
||The hieroglyphic script first appeared in Egypt
just prior to the founding of Dynasty I (c. 3100 B.C.), whereas its
successors, the hieratic and demotic scripts, both appeared prior to the
exilic period in Israel's history.
|From 2700 B.C.
||Among the early Egyptian writings are
The Teachings for Kagemni and The Teaching of Ptah-Hetep, which date from
about 2700 B.C.
There are, in addition to those witnesses, other
testimonies that illustrate the use of writing in Egypt prior to the time
of Moses, Joseph, and even Abraham, regardless of the dates ascribed to
each of those individuals.
Furthermore, the Israelites must have been aware of writing techniques
prior to their exodus from Egypt, for Moses was raised as a child with
great position in the household of the pharaoh during the New Kingdom
period. The New Testament record indicates the Hebrew traditional
position, as Stephen bears witness in his famous sermon when he relates
that "Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was
a man of power in words and deeds" (Acts 7:22).
That learning most likely
included writing on papyrus, as papyrus was used in writing earlier than
(c. 2500 B.C.).
East Mediterranean testimony
|From 3100 B.C.
||As early as
about 3100 B.C. there was writing used on cylinder seal impressions in Byblos.
|From 2500 B.C.
||Evidence from about 2500 B.C., shows that
pictographic signs were used in Byblos (Gebal) and Syria.
Leonard Woolley's discoveries at Atchana (in northern Syria)
appear to have been contemporaneous to the records found by Sir Arthur
Evans at Knossos, Crete. These records date into the mid-second millennium
B.C. and they indicate that connection between the mainland of Asia and
the island bridge of Europe, namely, Crete.
Early Palestinian and Syrian contributions
|From 2300 B.C.
||From 1947 to 1976, excavations
at Tell-Mardikh (ancient Elba) south of Aleppo in northern Syrian
uncovered over 15,000 clay tablets inscribed in the cuneiform script with
an early northwest Semitic dialect of 2300 B.C.
The tablets are from the
time of the Babylonian king Naram-Sin (equated by some with
Nimrod of Gen.
10:9) who campaigned in the area.
||Included among the tablets are portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh and other
kinds of literature from later Syria (Ugarit). Thus they attest to an
early literary tradition, as already well known from Babylonia.
addition, they have caused Old Testament scholars to reevaluate the
accuracy of the Bible patriarchs as well as names and events recorded in
Mitchell Dahood provides specific examples of clarification of
the Hebrew text from Eblaic evidence in his article "Ebla, Ugarit, and the
|From 1800 to
|A pottery fragment from Gezer is dated
from about 1800 to 1500 B.C.
The Lachish dagger inscription is
contemporary, as are inscriptions from Shechem, Beth-Shemesh, Razor, and
|From 1500 to
|Alphabetic inscriptions from the turquoise mines in southern
Sinai date from about
The Ras Shamra tablets, from the coastal site in northwest
Syria identified as Ugarit, date from about 1500 to 1300 B.C.
employed the same diplomatic language as the Tel el-Amarna tablets (c.
1380 B.C.) from the ancient Egyptian capital of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton).
At Ras Shamra were also found specimens of the Canaanite language written
in alphabetic form. Those writings were made by inscribing unique
cuneiform signs on clay tablets, known as the Ugaritic tablets.
All of the above evidence is extant from the period prior to the Moabite
Stone of Mesha, king of Moab.
The event recorded on the Moabite Stone is
that revolt against Israel recorded in 2 Kings 1:1 and 3:4-27.
the preceding evidence is not direct, it is overwhelming in its
denunciation of the negative higher critical position. It is also
overwhelming in its demarcation of the history of writing before the time
As a result, the more than 450 biblical references to writing
may be seen as reflective of the cultural diffusion between Israel and her
Activity of Biblical writers within literate history
The foregoing discussion makes the assertion that "Moses and the other
biblical writers wrote during the literate age of man" almost redundant.
Nevertheless, the biblical record itself asserts that its writers wrote. Several of the more 450 biblical references may be called upon to indicate
The Torah (Law) makes reference to several kinds of writing done
by Moses and his predecessors:
This is the book (the written record, the history) of
the generations of the offspring of Adam. When God created man, He
made him in the likeness of God.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write this
for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of
Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek
from under heaven."
And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD.
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Write
these words, for according to the tenor of these words I
have made a covenant with you and with Israel." So he was
there with the LORD forty days and forty
nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water.
And He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
"... Write each man's name on his rod. And you shall
write Aaron's name on the rod of Levi."
So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests
And the LORD said to Moses: "... Now
therefore, write down this song for yourselves"
Therefore Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it
to the children of Israel.
So it was, when Moses had completed writing the words of
this law in a book...
The Prophets (Nevi'im) indicate that writing was
employed by several individuals even prior to the time of the Moabite
as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded
the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law
Then the men arose to go away; and Joshua charged those who went to
survey the land, saying, "Go, walk through the land, survey
it, and come back to me, that I may cast lots for you here before
the LORD in Shiloh." So the men went,
passed through the land, and wrote the survey in a book in
seven parts by cities...
Then Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God.
These Kethuvi'im (Writings) also relate that individuals were
writing before the time of the Moabite insurrection recorded in 2 Kings
1:1 (2 Kings 1:1 - "Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of
Have I not written to you excellent things
Of counsels and knowledge.
|2 Chronicles 35:4
Prepare yourselves according to your fathers' houses,
according to your divisions, following the written
instruction of David king of Israel and the
written instruction of Solomon his son.
The materials upon which the ancients wrote were also used by the writers
Clay was not only used in ancient Sumer as early as about 3500 B.C.,
but it was used by Ezekiel (4:1 - "You also, son of man, take a clay
tablet and lay it before you, and portray on it a city, Jerusalem.).
This material would
be inscribed while it was still damp or soft.
It would then be either dried in the sun or baked in a kiln to make a
The clause "this is the account of" or "the book of the generations of"
occurs twelve times in Genesis and probably indicates the divisions of
early family records of the patriarchs:
||"This is the history of the heavens and the earth"
||"This is the book of the genealogy of Adam"
||"This is the genealogy of Noah"
||"Now this is the genealogy of the sons of Noah"
||"These were the sons of Shem, according to their
||"This is the genealogy of Shem"
||"This is the genealogy of Terah"
||"Now this is the genealogy of
||"This is the genealogy of Isaac"
||"Now this is the genealogy of
Esau, who is Edom."
||"And this is the genealogy of
Esau the father of the Edomites in Mount Seir"
||"This is the history of Jacob"
This was used in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Palestine, as is evidenced
biblical writers also made use of stone as a writing material
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Come up to Me on
the mountain and be there; and I will give you tablets of stone,
and the law and commandments which I have written, that you
may teach them." (NKJV)
Now Joshua built an altar to the LORD God of
Israel in Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD
had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written
in the Book of the Law of Moses: "an altar of whole stones
over which no man has wielded an iron tool." And they offered
on it burnt offerings to the LORD, and
sacrificed peace offerings. And there, in the presence
of the children of Israel, he wrote on the stones a
copy of the law of Moses, which he had written. (NKJV)
Also, at the Dog River in Lebanon and at Behistun in Iran royal
inscriptions were carved on cliff faces.
Papyrus was used in ancient Gebal (Byblos) and Egypt from about
It was made by pressing and gluing two layers of split papyrus
reeds together in order to form a sheet.
A series of papyrus sheets were
joined together to form a scroll.
It is that type of papyrus "scroll" that is mentioned in Revelation 5:1 (though it is translated "book" in
The apostle John used papyrus for his epistles (cf. 2 John 12).
And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll
written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.
|3 John 13
Having many things to write to you, I did not wish to do so with
paper and ink (NKJV)
Vellum - Parchment
These are various quality grades of writing
material made from animal skins of:
|calf or antelope
||The finest material - prepared for writing on both
sides, as in a codex
|sheep or goat
||Prepared for writing on both sides, as in a codex
|cow or bull
||Prepared for writing on only one side, as in a
Although these substances are not mentioned
directly as writing materials in the Bible, some kind of animal skin may
have been in mind in Jeremiah 36:23
It could hardly have been vellum, for
Frederic Kenyon has indicated that vellum was not known prior to about 200
B.C. Most likely it was leather, for the king used a knife on it.
And it happened, when Jehudi had read three or four columns, that
the king cut it with the scribe's knife and cast it into the fire that was
on the hearth, until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that
was on the hearth. (NKJV)
Parchments are, on the other hand, clearly mentioned in Paul's request to
Timothy (2 Tim. 4:13).
|2 Timothy 4:13
Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come — and the
books, especially the parchments. (NKJV)
Writing also was done in the biblical narrative upon
such things as -
Metal - (Ex. 28:36; Job 19:24; Matt. 22:19-20)
writing board recessed to hold a wax writing surface - (cf. Isa. 8:1; 30:8; Hab. 2:2; Luke 1:63);
Precious stones - (Ex. 28:9, II, 21; 39:6-14)
Potsherds - (Job 2:8), better known as ostraca, as found in such locations
as Samaria and Lachish in Palestine.
They were broken bits and pieces of pottery.
Linen - Still another item used in ancient
writing in Egypt, Greece, Etruscan and Roman Italy, but not mentioned in
the Bible, was linen.
instruments were necessary in the production of written
records on the various materials mentioned above:
A three-sided instrument with a beveled head, the stylus was used
to make incursions into clay and wax tablets.
It was sometimes called a
"pen," as in Jeremiah 17:1.
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with the
point of a diamond it is engraved (NKJV)
A chisel was used in making inscriptions in stone, as in Joshua
8:31-32. Job wished that his words might be engraved with "an iron stylus"
in the rock forever.
"an altar of whole stones over which no man has wielded an iron
A pen was employed in writing on papyrus, vellum, leather, and
parchment, as indicated in 3 John 13 (above).
This was used in Jeremiah 36:23 to destroy a scroll (see
reference above), the
material of which was probably tougher than papyrus. It was also used to
sharpen the writer's pen after it had begun to wear down.
Inkhorn and Ink
These were necessary concomitants of the pen, and they
served as the container and fluid used for writing on papyrus, vellum,
leather, and parchment. Thus, just as writing and its materials were
available for the biblical writers, so were the instruments necessary for
their vital task.


Telegraphy (from Greek têle, "at a distance" and ? gráphein, "to write") is the long-distance transmission of textual or symbolic (as opposed to verbal or audio) messages without the physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not.
Telegraphy requires that the method used for encoding the message be known to both sender and receiver. Many methods are designed according to the limits of the signalling medium used. The use of smoke signals, beacons, reflected light signals, and flag semaphore signals are early examples.
In the 19th century, the harnessing of electricity led to the invention of electrical telegraphy. The advent of radio in the early 20th century brought about radiotelegraphy and other forms of wireless telegraphy. In the Internet age, telegraphic means developed greatly in sophistication and ease of use, with natural language interfaces that hide the underlying code, allowing such technologies as electronic mail and instant messaging.
A "telegraph" is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy. The word "telegraph" alone now generally refers to an electrical telegraph.
Contrary to the extensive definition used by Chappe, Morse argued that the term telegraph can strictly be applied only to systems that transmit and record messages at a distance. This is to be distinguished from semaphore, which merely transmits messages. Smoke signals, for instance, are to be considered semaphore, not telegraph. According to Morse, telegraph dates only from 1832 when Pavel Schilling invented one of the earliest electrical telegraphs.
A telegraph message sent by an electrical telegraph operator or telegrapher using Morse code (or a printing telegraph operator using plain text) was known as a telegram. A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable, often shortened to a cable or a wire. Later, a Telex was a message sent by a Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network.
A wire picture or wire photo was a newspaper picture that was sent from a remote location by a facsimile telegraph. A diplomatic telegram, also known as a diplomatic cable, is the term given to a confidential communication between a diplomatic mission and the foreign ministry of its parent country. These continue to be called telegrams or cables regardless of the method used for transmission.
Even though early telegraphic precedents, such as signalling through the lighting of pyres, have existed since ancient times, long-distance telegraphy (transmission of complex messages) started in 1792 in the form of semaphore lines, or optical telegraphs, that sent messages to a distant observer through line-of-sight signals. Commercial electrical telegraphs were introduced from 1837.
The first telegraphs came in the form of optical telegraph, including the use of smoke signals, beacons, or reflected light, which have existed since ancient times. Early proposals for an optical telegraph system were made to the Royal Society by Robert Hooke in 1684 and were first implemented on an experimental level by Sir Richard Lovell Edgeworth in 1767.
During 1790-1795, at the height of the French Revolution, France needed a swift and reliable communication system to thwart the war efforts of its enemies. In 1790, the Chappe brothers set about devising a system of communication that would allow the central government to receive intelligence and to transmit orders in the shortest possible time. On 2 March 1791, at 11 am, they sent the message "si vous réussissez, vous serez bientôt couverts de gloire" (If you succeed, you will soon bask in glory) between Brulon and Parce, a distance of 16 kilometres (9.9 mi). The first means used a combination of black and white panels, clocks, telescopes, and codebooks to send their message.
In 1792, Claude was appointed Ingénieur-Télégraphiste and charged with establishing a line of stations between Paris and Lille, a distance of 230 kilometres (about 143 miles). It was used to carry dispatches for the war between France and Austria. In 1794, it brought news of a French capture of Condé-sur-l'Escaut from the Austrians less than an hour after it occurred.
The Prussian system was put into effect in the 1830s. However, they were highly dependent on good weather and daylight to work and even then could accommodate only about two words per minute. The last commercial semaphore link ceased operation in Sweden in 1880. As of 1895, France still operated coastal commercial semaphore telegraph stations, for ship-to-shore communication.
The first suggestion for using electricity as a means of communication appeared in the "Scots Magazine" in 1753. Using one wire for each letter of the alphabet, a message could be transmitted by connecting the wire terminals in turn to an electrostatic machine, and observing the deflection of pith balls at the far end. Telegraphs employing electrostatic attraction were the basis of early experiments in electrical telegraphy in Europe but were abandoned as being impractical and were never developed into a useful communication system.
One very early experiment in electrical telegraphy was an electrochemical telegraph created by the German physician, anatomist, and inventor Samuel Thomas von Sömmering in 1809, based on an earlier, less robust design of 1804 by Spanish polymath and scientist Francisco Salva Campillo. Both their designs employed multiple wires (up to 35) in order to visually represent most Latin letters and numerals. Thus, messages could be conveyed electrically up to a few kilometers (in von Sömmering's design), with each of the telegraph receiver's wires immersed in a separate glass tube of acid. As an electric current was applied by the sender representing each character of a message, it would at the recipient's end electrolyse the acid in its corresponding tube, releasing a stream of hydrogen bubbles next to its associated letter or numeral. The telegraph receiver's operator would visually observe the bubbles and could then record the transmitted message, albeit at a very low baud rate.
The first working telegraph was built by the English inventor Francis Ronalds in 1816 and used static electricity. At the family home on Hammersmith Mall, he set up a complete subterranean system in a 175-yard long trench as well as an eight-mile long overhead telegraph. The lines were connected at both ends to clocks marked with the letters of the alphabet and electrical impulses sent along the wire were used to transmit messages. Offering his invention to the Admiralty in July 1816, it was rejected as "wholly unnecessary". His account of the scheme and the possibilities of rapid global communication in Descriptions of an Electrical Telegraph and of some other Electrical Apparatus was the first published work on electric telegraphy and even described the risk of signal retardation due to induction. Elements of Ronalds' design were utilised in the subsequent commercialisation of the telegraph over 20 years later.
An early electromagnetic telegraph design was created by Russian diplomat Pavel Schilling in 1832. He set it up in his apartment in St. Petersburg and demonstrated the long-distance transmission of signals by positioning two telegraphs of his invention in two different rooms of his apartment. Schilling was the first to put into practice the idea of a binary system of signal transmissions.
Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber built the first electromagnetic telegraph used for regular communication in 1833 in Göttingen, connecting Göttingen Observatory and the Institute of Physics, covering a distance of about 1 km. The setup consisted of a coil that could be moved up and down over the end of two magnetic steel bars. The resulting induction current was transmitted through two wires to the receiver, consisting of a galvanometer. The direction of the current could be reversed by commuting the two wires in a special switch. Therefore, Gauss and Weber chose to encode the alphabet in a binary code, using positive and negative currents as the two states.
The first commercial electrical telegraph was co-developed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. In May 1837, they patented the Cooke and Wheatstone system, which used a number of needles on a board that could be moved to point to letters of the alphabet. The patent recommended a five-needle system, but any number of needles could be used depending on the number of characters it was required to code. A four-needle system was installed between Euston and Camden Town in London on a rail line being constructed by Robert Stephenson between London and Birmingham. It was successfully demonstrated on 25 July 1837. Euston needed to signal to an engine house at Camden Town to start hauling the locomotive up the incline. As at Liverpool, the electric telegraph was in the end rejected in favour of a pneumatic system with whistles.
Cooke and Wheatstone had their first commercial success with a system installed on the Great Western Railway over the 13 miles (21 km) from Paddington station to West Drayton in 1838, the first commercial telegraph in the world. This was a five-needle, six-wire system. The cables were originally installed underground in a steel conduit. However, the cables soon began to fail as a result of deteriorating insulation and were replaced with uninsulated wires on poles. As an interim measure, a two-needle system was used with three of the remaining working underground wires, which despite using only two needles had a greater number of codes. But when the line was extended to Slough in 1843, a one-needle, two-wire system was installed.
From this point, the use of the electric telegraph started to grow on the new railways being built from London. The London and Blackwall Railway (another rope-hauled application) was equipped with the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph when it opened in 1840, and many others followed. The one-needle telegraph proved highly successful on British railways, and 15,000 sets were still in use at the end of the nineteenth century. Some remained in service in the 1930s. In September 1845, the financier John Lewis Ricardo and Cooke formed the Electric Telegraph Company, the first public telegraphy company in the world. This company bought out the Cooke and Wheatstone patents and solidly established the telegraph business.
As well as the rapid expansion of the use of the telegraphs along the railways, they soon spread into the field of mass communication with the instruments being installed in post offices across the country. The era of mass personal communication had begun.
An electrical telegraph was independently developed and patented in the United States in 1837 by Samuel Morse. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signalling alphabet with Morse. The first telegram in the United States was sent by Morse on 11 January 1838, across two miles (3 km) of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey, although it was only later, in 1844, that he sent the message "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT" from the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore. From then on, commercial telegraphy took off in America with lines linking all the major metropolitan centres on the East Coast within the next decade. The overland telegraph connected the west coast of the continent to the east coast by 24 October 1861, bringing an end to the Pony Express.
The Morse telegraphic apparatus was officially adopted as the standard for European telegraphy in 1851. Only Great Britain with its extensive overseas empire kept the needle telegraph of Cooke and Wheatstone. In 1858, Morse introduced wired communication to Latin America when he established a telegraph system in Puerto Rico, then a Spanish Colony. The line was inaugurated on March 1, 1859, in a ceremony flanked by the Spanish and American flags.
Telegraphy was driven by the need to reduce sending costs, either in hand-work per message or by increasing the sending rate. While many experimental systems employing moving pointers and various electrical encodings proved too complicated and unreliable, a successful advance in the sending rate was achieved through the development of telegraphese.
The first system that didn't require skilled technicians to operate was Sir Charles Wheatstone's ABC system in 1840 where the letters of the alphabet were arranged around a clock-face, and the signal caused a needle to indicate the letter. This early system required the receiver to be present in real time to record the message and it reached speeds of up to 15 words a minute.
|Before Telegraphy, a letter by post from London took|
|12||New York in the United States|
|13||Alexandria in Egypt|
|19||Constantinople in Ottoman Turkey|
|33||Bombay in India (west coast of India)|
|44||Calcutta in Bengal (east coast of India)|
|57||Shanghai in China|
|73||Sydney in Australia|
In 1846, Alexander Bain patented a chemical telegraph in Edinburgh. The signal current made a readable mark on a moving paper tape soaked in a mixture of ammonium nitrate and potassium ferrocyanide, which gave a blue mark when a current was passed through it.
David Edward Hughes invented the printing telegraph in 1855; it used a keyboard of 26 keys for the alphabet and a spinning type wheel that determined the letter being transmitted by the length of time that had elapsed since the previous transmission. The system allowed for automatic recording on the receiving end. The system was very stable and accurate and became the accepted around the world.
The next improvement was the Baudot code of 1874. French engineer Émile Baudot patented a printing telegraph in which the signals were translated automatically into typographic characters. Each character was assigned a unique code based on the sequence of just five contacts. Operators had to maintain a steady rhythm, and the usual speed of operation was 30 words per minute.
By this point, reception had been automated, but the speed and accuracy of the transmission were still limited to the skill of the human operator. The first practical automated system was patented by Charles Wheatstone, the original inventor of the telegraph. The message (in Morse code) was typed onto a piece of perforated tape using a keyboard-like device called the 'Stick Punch'. The transmitter automatically ran the tape through and transmitted the message at the then exceptionally high speed of 70 words per minute.
Teleprinters were invented in order to send and receive messages without the need for operators trained in the use of Morse code. A system of two teleprinters, with one operator trained to use a typewriter, replaced two trained Morse code operators. The teleprinter system improved message speed and delivery time, making it possible for messages to be flashed across a country with little manual intervention.
Early teleprinters used the ITA-1 Baudot code, a five-bit code. This yielded only thirty-two codes, so it was over-defined into two "shifts", "letters", and "figures". An explicit, unshared shift code prefaced each set of letters and figures. In 1901, Baudot's code was modified by Donald Murray and around 1930, the CCITT introduced the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2) code as an international standard.
By 1935, message routing was the last great barrier to full automation. Large telegraphy providers began to develop systems that used telephone-like rotary dialling to connect teletypewriters. These machines were called "Telex" (TELegraph EXchange). Telex machines first performed rotary-telephone-style pulse dialling for circuit switching and then sent data by Baudot code. This "type A" Telex routing functionally automated message routing.
Telex began in Germany as a research and development program in 1926 that became an operational teleprinter service in 1933. The service was operated by the Reichspost (Reich postal service) and had a speed of 50 baud - approximately 66 words-per-minute.
At the rate of 45.45 (±0.5%) baud--considered speedy at the time--up to 25 telex channels could share a single long-distance telephone channel by using voice frequency telegraphy multiplexing, making telex the least expensive method of reliable long-distance communication.
Automatic teleprinter exchange service was introduced into Canada by CPR Telegraphs and CN Telegraph in July 1957, and in 1958, Western Union started to build a Telex network in the United States.
Beginning in 1956, telegrams begun to be transmitted over the Telex network using the standard named Gentex in order to lower the costs for some European telecommunications companies by allowing the sending telegraph station to connect directly to the receiving station.
Soon after the first successful telegraph systems were operational, the possibility of transmitting messages across the sea by way of submarine communications cables was first mooted. One of the primary technical challenges was to insulate the submarine cable sufficiently to prevent the current from leaking out into the water. In 1842, a Scottish surgeon William Montgomerie introduced Gutta-percha, the adhesive juice of the Palaquium gutta tree, to Europe. Michael Faraday and Wheatstone soon discovered the merits of gutta-percha as an insulator, and in 1845, the latter suggested that it should be employed to cover the wire which was proposed to be laid from Dover to Calais. It was tried on a wire laid across the Rhine between Deutz and Cologne. In 1849, C.V. Walker, electrician to the South Eastern Railway, submerged a two-mile wire coated with gutta-percha off the coast from Folkestone, which was tested successfully.
John Watkins Brett, an engineer from Bristol, sought and obtained permission from Louis-Philippe in 1847 to establish telegraphic communication between France and England. The first undersea cable was laid in 1850 and connected London with Paris. After an initial exchange of greetings between Queen Victoria and President Napoleon, it was almost immediately severed by a French fishing vessel. The line was relaid the next year and then followed by connections to Ireland and the Low Countries.
The Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed in London in 1856 to undertake to construct a commercial telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean. It was successfully completed on 27 July 1866, by the ship SS Great Eastern, captained by Sir James Anderson after many mishaps along the way. Earlier transatlantic submarine cables installations were attempted in 1857, 1858, and 1865. The 1858 cable only operated intermittently for a few days or weeks before it failed. The study of underwater telegraph cables accelerated interest in mathematical analysis of very long transmission lines. An overland telegraph from Britain to India was first connected in 1866 but was unreliable so a submarine telegraph cable was connected in 1870. Several telegraph companies were combined to form the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1872.
Australia was first linked to the rest of the world in October 1872 by a submarine telegraph cable at Darwin. This brought news reportage from the rest of the world. The telegraph across the Pacific was completed in 1902, finally encircling the world.
From the 1850s until well into the 20th century, British submarine cable systems dominated the world system. This was set out as a formal strategic goal, which became known as the All Red Line. In 1896, there were thirty cable laying ships in the world and twenty-four of them were owned by British companies. In 1892, British companies owned and operated two-thirds of the world's cables and by 1923, their share was still 42.7 percent. During World War I, Britain's telegraph communications were almost completely uninterrupted while it was able to quickly cut Germany's cables worldwide.
In 1843, Scottish inventor Alexander Bain invented a device that could be considered the first facsimile machine. He called his invention a "recording telegraph". Bain's telegraph was able to transmit images by electrical wires. Frederick Bakewell made several improvements on Bain's design and demonstrated a telefax machine. In 1855, an Italian abbot, Giovanni Caselli, also created an electric telegraph that could transmit images. Caselli called his invention "Pantelegraph". Pantelegraph was successfully tested and approved for a telegraph line between Paris and Lyon.
In 1881, English inventor Shelford Bidwell constructed the scanning phototelegraph that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing. Around 1900, German physicist Arthur Korn invented the Bildtelegraph widespread in continental Europe especially since a widely noticed transmission of a wanted-person photograph from Paris to London in 1908 used until the wider distribution of the radiofax. Its main competitors were the Bélinographe by Édouard Belin first, then since the 1930s, the Hellschreiber, invented in 1929 by German inventor Rudolf Hell, a pioneer in mechanical image scanning and transmission.
The late 1880s through to the 1890s saw the discovery and then development of a newly understood phenomenon into a form of wireless telegraphy, called Hertzian wave wireless telegraphy, radiotelegraphy, or (later) simply "radio". Between 1886 and 1888, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz published the results of his experiments where he was able to transmit electromagnetic waves (radio waves) through the air, proving James Clerk Maxwell's 1873 theory of electromagnetic radiation. Many scientists and inventors experimented with this new phenomenon but the general consensus was that these new waves (similar to light) would be just as short range as light, and, therefore, useless for long range communication.
At the end of 1894, the young Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi began working on the idea of building a commercial wireless telegraphy system based on the use of Hertzian waves (radio waves), a line of inquiry that he noted other inventors did not seem to be pursuing. Building on the ideas of previous scientists and inventors Marconi re-engineered their apparatus by trial and error attempting to build a radio-based wireless telegraphic system that would function the same as wired telegraphy. He would work on the system through 1895 in his lab and then in field tests making improvements to extend its range. After many breakthroughs, including applying the wired telegraphy concept of grounding the transmitter and receiver, Marconi was able, by early 1896, to transmit radio far beyond the short ranges that had been predicted. Having failed to interest the Italian government, the 22-year-old inventor brought his telegraphy system to Britain in 1896 and met William Preece, a Welshman, who was a major figure in the field and Chief Engineer of the General Post Office. A series of demonstrations for the British government followed--by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) across Salisbury Plain.
On 13 May 1897, Marconi, assisted by George Kemp, a Cardiff Post Office engineer, transmitted the first wireless signals over water to Lavernock (near Penarth in Wales) from Flat Holm. The message sent was "ARE YOU READY". From his Fraserburgh base, he transmitted the first long-distance, cross-country wireless signal to Poldhu in Cornwall.[when?] His star rising, he was soon sending signals across The English channel (1899), from shore to ship (1899) and finally across the Atlantic (1901). A study of these demonstrations of radio, with scientists trying to work out how a phenomenon predicted to have a short range could transmit "over the horizon", led to the discovery of a radio reflecting layer in the Earth's atmosphere in 1902, later called the ionosphere.
Radiotelegraphy proved effective for rescue work in sea disasters by enabling effective communication between ships and from ship to shore. In 1904, Marconi began the first commercial service to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radio-telegraph service was finally begun on 17 October 1907. Notably, Marconi's apparatus was used to help rescue efforts after the sinking of Titanic. Britain's postmaster-general summed up, referring to the Titanic disaster, "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi...and his marvellous invention."
Around 1965, DARPA commissioned a study of decentralised switching systems. Some of the ideas developed in this study provided inspiration for the development of the ARPANET packet switching research network, which later grew to become the public Internet.
As the PSTN became a digital network, T-carrier "synchronous" networks became commonplace in the U.S. A T1 line has a "frame" of 193 bits that repeats 8000 times per second. The first bit called the "sync" bit alternates between 1 and 0 to identify the start of the frames. The rest of the frame provides 8 bits for each of 24 separate voice or data channels. Customarily, a T-1 link is sent over a balanced twisted pair, isolated with transformers to prevent current flow. Europeans adopted a similar system (E-1) of 32 channels (with one channel for frame synchronisation).
Later, SONET and SDH were adapted to combine carrier channels into groups that could be sent over optic fiber. The capacity of an optic fibre is often extended with wavelength division multiplexing, rather than rerigging new fibre. Rigging several fibres in the same structures as the first fibre is usually easy and inexpensive, and many fibre installations include unused spare "dark fibre", "dark wavelengths", and unused parts of the SONET frame, so-called "virtual channels".
In 2002, the Internet was used by Kevin Warwick at the University of Reading to communicate neural signals, in purely electronic form, telegraphically between the nervous systems of two humans, potentially opening up a new form of communication combining the Internet and telegraphy.
Since the Internet operates over any digital transmission medium, further evolution of telegraphic technology will be effectively concealed from users.
E-mail was first invented for CTSS and similar time sharing systems of the era in the mid-1960s. At first, e-mail was possible only between different accounts on the same computer (typically a mainframe). ARPANET allowed different computers to be connected to allow e-mails to be relayed from computer to computer, with the first ARPANET e-mail being sent in 1971.Multics also pioneered instant messaging between computer users in the mid-1970s. With the growth of the Internet, e-mail began to be possible between any two computers with access to the Internet.
Various private networks like UUNET (founded 1987), the Well (1985), and GEnie (1985) had e-mail from the 1970s, but subscriptions were quite expensive for an individual, US$25 to US$50 per month, just for e-mail. Internet use was then largely limited to government, academia, and other government contractors until the net was opened to commercial use in the 1980s.
By the early 1990s, modems made e-mail a viable alternative to Telex systems in a business environment. But individual e-mail accounts were not widely available until local Internet service providers were in place, although demand grew rapidly, as e-mail was seen as the Internet's killer app. It allowed anyone to email anyone, whereas previously, different system had been walled off from each other, such that America Online subscribers could email only other America Online subscribers, Compuserve subscribers could email only other Compuserve subscribers, etc. The broad user base created by the demand for e-mail smoothed the way for the rapid acceptance of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s.Fax machines were another technology that helped displace the telegram.
On Monday, 12 July 1999, a final telegram was sent from the National Liberty Ship Memorial, the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, in San Francisco Bay to President Bill Clinton in the White House. Officials of Globe Wireless reported that "The message was 95 words, and it took six or eight minutes to copy it." They then transmitted the message to the White House via e-mail. That event was also used to mark the final commercial U.S. ship-to-shore telegraph message transmitted from North America by Globe Wireless, a company founded in 1911. Sent from its wireless station at Half Moon Bay, California, the sign-off message was a repeat of Samuel F. B. Morse's message 155 years earlier, "What hath God wrought?"
|Country||Service available (yes/no)||Year service ended||Comments|
|Argentina||Yes||n/a||Correo Argentino still offers telegram service within Argentina and to international destinations.|
|Australia||No||2011||Australia Post closed its telegram service on 7 March 2011.|
|Bahrain||Yes||n/a||Batelco still offers telegram service. Telegrams are sent for deaths or important occasions as they are thought to be more formal than email or fax, but less so than a letter.|
|Belgium||No||2017||Proximus discontinued telegram service on 29 December 2017. It sent 63,000 telegrams in 2010, which declined to 8,000 in 2017.|
|Canada||Yes||n/a||Telegrams Canada still offers telegram service. AT&T Canada (previously CNCP Telecommunications) had discontinued its telegram service in 2001 and later became MTS Allstream.|
|France||No||2018||Orange S.A. closed its telegram service on 30 April 2018.|
|Germany||Yes||n/a||Deutsche Post still offers telegram service, delivering telegrams the next day as ordinary mail. Deutsche Post discontinued service to foreign countries on 31 December 2000. A private firm, TelegrammDirekt.de, offers delivery in Germany and service to a number of foreign countries.|
|Hungary||Yes||n/a||Magyar Posta still offers telegram service.|
|India||No||2013||BSNL discontinued telegram service on 15 July 2013. Telegrams to foreign countries had been discontinued in May 2013.|
|Iran||Yes||n/a||Telecommunication Infrastructure Company of I.R.Iran still offers telegram service.|
|Ireland||No||2002||Eircom discontinued telegram service on 30 July 2002.|
|Israel||Yes||n/a||Israel Postal Company still offers telegram service. Telegrams may be sent via the internet or by a telephone operator. Illustrated telegrams are available for special occasions.|
|Italy||Yes||n/a||Poste Italiane still offers telegram service. Around 12.5 million telegrams are sent annually.|
|Japan||Yes||n/a||NTT and KDDI still offer telegram service. Telegrams are used mainly for special occasions such as weddings, funerals, graduations, etc. Local offices offer telegrams printed on special decorated paper and envelopes.|
|Lithuania||No||2007||Teo LT discontinued telegram service on 15 October 2007.|
|Malaysia||No||2012||Telekom Malaysia discontinued telegram service on 1 July 2012.|
|Mexico||Yes||n/a||Telmex still offer telegram service as a low-cost service for people who cannot afford or do not have access to e-mail.|
|Nepal||No||2009||Nepal Telecom discontinued telegram service on 1 January 2009.|
|Netherlands||Yes||n/a||KPN sold its telegram service to the Swiss-based company Unitel Telegram Services in 2001.|
|New Zealand||Yes||n/a||New Zealand Post discontinued telegram service in 1999. It later reinstated the service in 2003 for use only by business customers, primarily for debt collection or other important business notices.|
|Pakistan||No||2006||Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd discontinued telegram service on 27 January 2006.|
|Philippines||No||2013||The government's Telecommunications Office or Tanggapan ng Telekomunikasyon discontinued telegram service on 20 September 2013. The last telegram was sent on that day at 3:15 PM.|
|Poland||No||2018||Poczta Polska offered telegram service with guaranteed time of delivery until 1 October 2018. Telegram could be ordered via website and additionally pre-delivered by SMS or e-mail.|
|Portugal||Yes||n/a||SEUR (a DPD company) still offers telegram service.|
|Russia||Yes||n/a||Central Telegraph (subsidiary of national operator Rostelecom) still offers telegram service. "Regular" or "Urgent" telegrams can be sent to any address in Russia and other countries. So called "Stylish" telegrams printed on artistic postcards are also available.|
|Serbia||Yes||n/a||JP Po?ta Srbije Beograd, the state-owned post, still offers telegram service. It is commonly used to express condolences, official notifications of death or to congratulate anniversaries, births, graduations, etc. Telegrams may be sent by using special telephone number or directly at the post office. Telegrams are delivered on the same day for recipients in territories covered by post offices with telegram delivery service and are delivered as regular mail for post offices which do not have telegram delivery service. In internal traffic, length of message is limited to 800 characters and is charged at flat rate while in international traffic telegrams are charged by word. International delivery is possible for recipients in Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia.|
|Slovakia||No||2007||The Slovak post discontinued telegram service on 1 January 2007.|
|Slovenia||Yes||n/a||Po?ta Slovenije d.o.o. (Slovenian Post) still provides telegram service commonly used for special occasions such as births, anniversaries, condolences, graduations, etc. It is considered more formal than email or SMS. Telegrams are usually printed in a typewriter font on greeting or condolences cards delivered in a specific yellow envelope. It is also possible to send gifts (e.g. chocolates, wine, plush toys, flowers) together with a message. The telegrams can be sent from local post offices, over the phone or online to addresses in Slovenia only.|
|Spain||Yes||n/a||SEUR (a DPD company) still offers telegram service.|
|Sweden||No||2002||Telia discontinued telegram service in 2002.|
|Switzerland||Yes||n/a||Unitel Telegram Services took over telegram service from the national PTTs. Telegrams can still be sent to and from most countries.|
|Thailand||No||2008||Thailand Post discontinued telegram service on 30 April 2008, at 20.00 local time.|
|Ukraine||No||2018||Ukrtelecom discontinued telegram service on 1 March 2018.|
|United Kingdom||Yes||n/a||British Telecom sold its telegram service in 2003 to Telegrams Online, which promotes the use of telegrams as a retro greeting card or invitation.|
|United States||Yes||n/a||iTelegram took over telegram service from Western Union on 27 January 2006. iTelegram offers telex over IP but does not offer legacy Telex as subscriber telex lines are no longer available in the United States. Individual subscribers can send telegrams via the iTelegram web site or via Deskmail, a legacy Windows program.|
Prior to the electrical telegraph, ancient civilizations, such as Greece, Egypt, and China, transmitted long-distance information using drumbeats, flame beacons, or light flashes with a heliograph. Later, nearly all information was limited to traveling at the speed of a human or animal. The telegraph freed communication from the time constraints of postal mail and revolutionized the global economy and society. By the end of the 19th century, the telegraph was becoming an increasingly common medium of communication for ordinary people. The telegraph isolated the message (information) from the physical movement of objects or the process.
Telegraphy facilitated the growth of organizations "in the railroads, consolidated financial and commodity markets, and reduced information costs within and between firms". This immense growth in the business sectors influenced society to embrace the use of telegrams.
Worldwide telegraphy changed the gathering of information for news reporting. Messages and information would now travel far and wide, and the telegraph demanded a language "stripped of the local, the regional; and colloquial", to better facilitate a worldwide media language. Media language had to be standardized, which led to the gradual disappearance of different forms of speech and styles of journalism and storytelling.
Numerous newspapers and news outlets in various countries, such as The Daily Telegraph in Britain, The Telegraph in India, De Telegraaf in the Netherlands, and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the US, were given names which include the word "telegraph" due to their having received news by means of electric telegraphy. Some of these names are retained even though more sophisticated means are now used. A newspaper in Indian state of Tamil Nadu is named as Dhina Thanthi which means daily telegraph.
The average length of a telegram in the 1900s in the US was 11.93 words, more than half of the messages were 10 words or fewer.
According to another study, the mean length of the telegrams sent in the UK before 1950 was 14.6 words or 78.8 characters.
(n.) 4. a telegram sent abroad, especially by submarine cable. (v.) 9. to send a message by submarine cable.
It was in the month of J, a century ago, that Franklin made his celebrated experiment with the Electric Kite, by means of which he demonstrated the identity of electricity and lightning.
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Chanson de geste
The chanson de geste[a] (Old French for "song of heroic deeds", from Latin gesta "deeds, actions accomplished") is a medieval narrative, a type of epic poem that appears at the dawn of French literature. The earliest known poems of this genre date from the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, before the emergence of the lyric poetry of the trouvères (troubadours) and the earliest verse romances. They reached their apogee in the period 1150–1250.
Composed in verse, these narrative poems of moderate length (averaging 4000 lines) were originally sung, or (later) recited, by minstrels or jongleurs. More than one hundred chansons de geste have survived in around three hundred manuscripts that date from the 12th to the 15th century.
- 1 Origins
- 2 Subject matter and structure
- 3 Versification
- 4 Composition and performance
- 5 The poems themselves
- 6 Legacy and adaptations
- 7 See also
- 8 Notes
- 9 References
- 10 External links
Since the 19th century, much critical debate has centered on the origins of the chansons de geste, and particularly on explaining the length of time between the composition of the chansons and the actual historical events which they reference. The historical events the chansons allude to occur in the eighth through tenth centuries, yet the earliest chansons we have were probably composed at the end of the eleventh century: only three chansons de geste have a composition that incontestably dates from before 1150: the Chanson de Guillaume, The Song of Roland and Gormont et Isembart: the first half of the Chanson de Guillaume may date from as early as the eleventh century; Gormont et Isembart may date from as early as 1068, according to one expert; and The Song of Roland probably dates from after 1086 to c.1100.
Three early theories of the origin of chansons de geste believe in the continued existence of epic material (either as lyric poems, epic poems or prose narrations) in these intervening two or three centuries. Critics like Claude Charles Fauriel, François Raynouard and German Romanticists like Jacob Grimm posited the spontaneous creation of lyric poems by the people as a whole at the time of the historic battles, which were later put together to form the epics. This was the basis for the "cantilena" theory of epic origin, which was elaborated by Gaston Paris, although he maintained that single authors, rather than the multitude, were responsible for the songs.
This theory was also supported by Robert Fawtier and by Léon Gautier (although Gautier thought the cantilenae were composed in Germanic languages). At the end of the nineteenth century, Pio Rajna, seeing similarities between the chansons de geste and old Germanic/Merovingian tales, posited a Germanic origin for the French poems. A different theory, introduced by the medievalist Paul Meyer, suggested the poems were based on old prose narrations of the original events.
Another theory (largely discredited today), developed by Joseph Bédier, posited that the early chansons were recent creations, not earlier than the year 1000, developed by singers who, emulating the songs of "saints lives" sung in front of churches (and collaborating with the church clerics), created epic stories based on the heroes whose shrines and tombs dotted the great pilgrimage routes, as a way of drawing pilgrims to these churches. Critics have also suggested that knowledge by clerics of ancient Latin epics may have played a role in their composition.
Subsequent criticism has vacillated between "traditionalists" (chansons created as part of a popular tradition) and "individualists" (chansons created by a unique author), but more recent historical research has done much to fill in gaps in the literary record and complicate the question of origins. Critics have discovered manuscripts, texts and other traces of the legendary heroes, and further explored the continued existence of a Latin literary tradition (c.f. the scholarship of Ernst Robert Curtius) in the intervening centuries. The work of Jean Rychner on the art of the minstrels and the work of Parry and Lord on Yugoslavian oral traditional poetry, Homeric verse and oral composition have also been suggested to shed light on the oral composition of the chansons, although this view is not without its critics who maintain the importance of writing not only in the preservation of the texts, but also in their composition, especially for the more sophisticated poems.
Subject matter and structure
Composed in Old French and apparently intended for oral performance by jongleurs, the chansons de geste narrate legendary incidents (sometimes based on real events) in the history of France during the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, the age of Charles Martel, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, with emphasis on their conflicts with the Moors and Saracens, and also disputes between kings and their vassals.
The traditional subject matter of the chansons de geste became known as the Matter of France. This distinguished them from romances concerned with the Matter of Britain, that is, King Arthur and his knights; and with the so-called Matter of Rome, covering the Trojan War, the conquests of Alexander the Great, the life of Julius Cæsar and some of his Imperial successors, who were given medieval makeovers as exemplars of chivalry.
A key theme of the chansons de geste, which set them off from the romances (which tended to explore the role of the "individual"), is their critique and celebration of community/collectivity (their epic heroes are portrayed as figures in the destiny of the nation and Christianity) and their representation of the complexities of feudal relations and service.
The subject matter of the chansons evolved over time, according to public taste. Alongside the great battles and scenes of historic prowess of the early chansons there began to appear other themes. Realistic elements (money, urban scenes) and elements from the new court culture (female characters, the role of love) began to appear. Other fantasy and adventure elements, derived from the romances, were gradually added: giants, magic, and monsters increasingly appear among the foes along with Muslims. There is also an increasing dose of Eastern adventure, drawing on contemporary experiences in the Crusades; in addition, one series of chansons retells the events of the First Crusade and the first years of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The conflicts of the 14th century (Hundred Years' War) brought a renewed epic spirit and nationalistic (or propagandistic) fervor to some chansons de geste (such as La Chanson de Hugues Capet).
The poems contain an assortment of character types; the repertoire of valiant hero, brave traitor, shifty or cowardly traitor, Saracen giant, beautiful Saracen princess, and so forth. As the genre matured, fantasy elements were introduced. Some of the characters that were devised by the poets in this manner include the fairy Oberon, who made his literary debut in Huon de Bordeaux; and the magic horse Bayard, who first appears in Renaud de Montauban. Quite soon an element of self-parody appears; even the august Charlemagne was not above gentle mockery in the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne.
The narrative structure of the chanson de geste has been compared to the one in the Nibelungenlied and in creole legends by Henri Wittmann on the basis of common narreme structure as first developed in the work of Eugene Dorfman and Jean-Pierre Tusseau
Early chansons de geste were typically composed in ten-syllable lines grouped in assonanced (meaning that the last stressed vowel is the same in each line throughout the stanza, but the last consonant differs from line to line) stanzas (called laisses). These stanzas are of variable length.
An example from the Chanson de Roland illustrates the technique of the ten-syllable assonanced form. The assonance in this stanza is on e:
Desuz un pin, delez un eglanter
Under a pine tree, by a rosebush,
Later chansons were composed in monorhyme stanzas, in which the last syllable of each line rhymes fully throughout the stanza. Later chansons also tended to be composed using alexandrines (twelve-syllable) lines, instead of ten-syllable lines (some early chansons, such as Girart de Vienne, were even adapted into a twelve-syllable version).
Or s'en fuit Corbarans tos les plains de Surie,
So Corbaran escaped across the plains of Syria;
Composition and performance
The public of the chansons de geste—the lay (secular) public of the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries—was largely illiterate, except for (at least to the end of the 12th century) members of the great courts and (in the south) smaller noble families. Thus, the chansons were primarily an oral medium.
Opinions vary greatly on whether the early chansons were first written down and then read from manuscripts (although parchment was quite expensive) or memorized for performance, or whether portions were improvised, or whether they were entirely the product of spontaneous oral composition and later written down. Similarly, scholars differ greatly on the social condition and literacy of the poets themselves; were they cultured clerics or illiterate jongleurs working within an oral tradition? As an indication of the role played by orality in the tradition of the chanson de geste, lines and sometimes whole stanzas, especially in the earlier examples, are noticeably formulaic in nature, making it possible both for the poet to construct a poem in performance and for the audience to grasp a new theme with ease.
Scholarly opinions differ on the exact manner of recitation, but it is generally believed that the chansons de geste were originally sung (whereas the medieval romances were probably spoken) by poets, minstrels or jongleurs, who would sometimes accompany themselves, or be accompanied, on the vielle, a mediæval fiddle played with a bow. Several manuscript texts include lines in which the jongleur demands attention, threatens to stop singing, promises to continue the next day, and asks for money or gifts. By the middle of the 13th century, singing had probably given way to recitation.
It has been calculated that a reciter could sing about a thousand verses an hour and probably limited himself to 1000–1300 verses by performance, making it likely that the performance of works extended over several days. Given that many chansons from the late twelfth century on extended to over 10,000 verses or more (for example, Aspremont comprises 11,376 verses, while Quatre Fils Aymon comprises 18,489 verses), it is conceivable that few spectators heard the longest works in their entirety.
While poems like The Song of Roland were sometimes heard in public squares and were no doubt warmly received by a broad public, some critics caution that the chansons should probably not be characterized as popular literature and some chansons appear particularly tailored for an audience of aristocratic, privileged or warrior classes.
The poems themselves
More than one hundred chansons de geste have survived in around three hundred manuscripts that date from the 12th to the 15th century. Several popular chansons were written down more than once in varying forms. The earliest chansons are all (more or less) anonymous; many later ones have named authors.
By the middle of the 12th century, the corpus of works was being expanded principally by "cyclisation", that is to say by the formation of "cycles" of chansons attached to a character or group of characters—with new chansons being added to the ensemble by singing of the earlier or later adventures of the hero, of their youthful exploits ("enfances"), the great deeds of their ancestors or descendants, or their retreat from the world to a convent ("moniage") – or attached to an event (like the Crusades).
About 1215 Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, in the introductory lines to his Girart de Vienne, subdivided the Matter of France, the usual subject area of the chansons de geste, into three cycles, which revolved around three main characters (see quotation at Matter of France). There are several other less formal lists of chansons, or of the legends they incorporate. One can be found in the fabliau entitled Des Deux Bordeors Ribauz, a humorous tale of the second half of the 13th century, in which a jongleur lists the stories he knows. Another is included by the Catalan troubadour Guiraut de Cabrera in his humorous poem Ensenhamen, better known from its first words as "Cabra juglar": this is addressed to a juglar (jongleur) and purports to instruct him on the poems he ought to know but doesn't.
The listing below is arranged according to Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube's cycles, extended with two additional groupings and with a final list of chansons that fit into no cycle. There are numerous differences of opinion about the categorization of individual chansons.
Geste du roi
The chief character is usually Charlemagne or one of his immediate successors. A pervasive theme is the King's role as champion of Christianity. This cycle contains the first of the chansons to be written down, the Chanson de Roland or "The Song of Roland".
- Chanson de Roland (c. 1100 for the Oxford text, the earliest written version); several other versions exist, including the Occitan Ronsasvals, the Middle High German Ruolandsliet and the Latin Carmen de Prodicione Guenonis.
- Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne or Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à Constantinople dealing with a fictional expedition by Charlemagne and his knights (c. 1140; two 15th century reworkings)
- Fierabras (c. 1170)
- Aspremont (c. 1190); a later version formed the basis of Aspramonte by Andrea da Barberino
- Anseïs de Carthage (c. 1200)
- Chanson de Saisnes or "Song of the Saxons", by Jean Bodel (c. 1200)
- Huon de Bordeaux originally c. 1215–1240, known from slightly later manuscripts. A "prequel" and four sequels were later added:
- Gaydon (c. 1230)
- Jehan de Lanson (before 1239)
- Berthe aux Grands Pieds by Adenet le Roi (c. 1275), and a later Franco-Italian reworking
- Les Enfances Ogier by Adenet le Roi (c. 1275) | to Ogier the Dane.
- Entrée d'Espagne (c. 1320)
- Hugues Capet (c. 1360)
- Galiens li Restorés known from a single manuscript of about 1490
- Aiquin or Acquin
- Otuel or Otinel
- Ogier le Danois by Raimbert de Paris
- Gui de Bourgogne
- Macaire or La Chanson de la Reine Sebile
- Huon d'Auvergne, a lost chanson known from a 16th-century retelling. The hero is mentioned among epic heroes in the Ensenhamen of Guiraut de Cabrera, and figures as a character in Mainet
Geste de Garin de Monglane
The central character is not Garin de Monglane but his supposed great-grandson, Guillaume d'Orange. These chansons deal with knights who were typically younger sons, not heirs, who seek land and glory through combat with the Infidel (in practice, Muslim) enemy.
- Chanson de Guillaume (c. 1100)
- Couronnement de Louis (c. 1130)
- Le Charroi de Nîmes (c. 1140)
- La Prise d'Orange (c. 1150), reworking of a lost version from before 1122
- Aliscans (c. 1180), with several later versions
- La Bataille Loquifer by Graindor de Brie (fl. 1170)
- Le Moniage Rainouart by Graindor de Brie (fl. 1170)
- Foulques de Candie, by Herbert le Duc of Dammartin (fl. 1170)
- Simon de Pouille or "Simon of Apulia", fictional eastern adventures; the hero is said to be a grandson of Garin de Monglane
- Floovant (late 12th); the hero is a son of Merovingian King Clovis I
- Aymeri de Narbonne by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube (late 12th/early 13th)
- Girart de Vienne by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube (late 12th/early 13th); also found in a later shorter version alongside Hernaut de Beaulande and Renier de Gennes
- Les Enfances Garin de Monglane (15th century)
- Garin de Monglane (13th century)
- Hernaut de Beaulande; a fragment of the 14th century and a later version
- Renier de Gennes
- Les Enfances Guillaume (before 1250)
- Les Narbonnais (c. 1205), in two parts, known as Le département des enfants Aymeri, Le siège de Narbonne
- Les Enfances Vivien (c. 1205)
- Le Covenant Vivien or La Chevalerie Vivien
- Le Siège de Barbastre (c. 1180)
- Bovon de Commarchis (c. 1275), reworking by Adenet le Roi of the Siege de Barbastre
- Guibert d'Andrenas (13th century)
- La Prise de Cordres (13th century)
- La Mort Aymeri de Narbonne (c. 1180)
- Les Enfances Renier
- Le Moniage Guillaume (1160–1180)
Geste de Doon de Mayence
This cycle concerns traitors and rebels against royal authority. In each case the revolt ends with the defeat of the rebels and their eventual repentance.
- Gormond et Isembart
- Girart de Roussillon (1160–1170). The hero Girart de Roussillon also figures in Girart de Vienne, in which he is identified as a son of Garin de Monglane. There is a later sequel:
- Renaud de Montauban or Les Quatre Fils Aymon (end of the 12th century)
- Raoul de Cambrai, apparently begun by Bertholais; existing version from end of 12th century
- Doön de Mayence (mid 13th century)
- Doon de Nanteuil current in the second half of the 12th century, now known only in fragments which derive from a 13th-century version. To this several sequels were attached:
- Aye d'Avignon, probably composed between 1195 and 1205. The fictional heroine is first married to Garnier de Nanteuil, who is son of Doon de Nanteuil and grandson of Doon de Mayence. After Garnier's death she marries the Saracen Ganor
- Gui de Nanteuil, evidently popular around 1207 when the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras mentions the story. The fictional hero is son of the heroine of Aye d'Avignon (to which Gui de Nanteuil forms a sequel)
- Tristan de Nanteuil. The fictional hero is son of the hero of Gui de Nanteuil
- Parise la Duchesse. The fictional heroine is daughter of the heroine of Aye d'Avignon. Exiled from France, she gives birth to a son, Hugues, who becomes king of Hungary
- Maugis d'Aigremont
- Vivien l'Amachour de Monbranc
This local cycle of epics of Lorraine traditional history, in the late form in which it is now known, includes details evidently drawn from Huon de Bordeaux and Ogier le Danois.
Not listed by Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, this cycle deals with the First Crusade and its immediate aftermath.
- Chanson d'Antioche, apparently begun by Richard le Pèlerin c. 1100; earliest surviving text by Graindor de Douai c. 1180; expanded version 14th century
- Les Chétifs telling the adventures (mostly fictional) of the poor crusaders led by Peter the Hermit; the hero is Harpin de Bourges. The episode was eventually incorporated, c. 1180, by Graindor de Douai in his reworking of the Chanson d'Antioche
- Matabrune tells the story of old Matabrune and of the great-grandfather of Godefroi de Bouillon
- Le Chevalier au Cigne tells the story of Elias, grandfather of Godefroi de Bouillon. Originally composed around 1192, it was afterwards extended and divided into several branches
- Les Enfances Godefroi or "Childhood exploits of Godefroi" tells the story of the youth of Godefroi de Bouillon and his three brothers
- Chanson de Jérusalem
- La Mort de Godefroi de Bouillon, quite unhistorical, narrates Godefroi's poisoning by the Patriarch of Jerusalem
- Baudouin de Sebourc (mid-14th century)
- Bâtard de Bouillon (early 14th century)
- Gormont et Isembart
- Ami et Amile, followed by a sequel:
- Beuve de Hanstonne, and a related poem:
- Aigar et Maurin
- Aïmer le Chétif, a lost chanson
- Aiol (13th century)
- Théséus de Cologne, possibly a romance
The chansons de geste reached their apogee in the period 1150–1250. By the middle of the 13th century, public taste in France had begun to abandon these epics, preferring, rather, the romances. As the genre progressed in the middle of the 13th century, only certain traits (like versification, laisse structure, formulaic forms, setting, and other clichés of the genre) remained to set the chansons apart from the romances. The 15th century saw the cycles of chansons (along with other chronicles) converted into large prose compilations (such as the compilation made by David Aubert). Yet, the themes of the epics continued to exert an influence through the 16th century.
Legacy and adaptations
The chansons de geste created a body of mythology that lived on well after they ceased to be produced in France.
The chanson de geste was also adapted in southern (Occitan-speaking) France. One of the three surviving manuscripts of the chanson Girart de Roussillon (12th century) is in Occitan, as are two works based on the story of Charlemagne and Roland, Rollan a Saragossa and Ronsasvals (early 12th century). The chanson de geste form was also used in such Occitan texts as Canso d'Antioca (late 12th century), Daurel e Betó (first half of the 13th century), and Song of the Albigensian Crusade (c.1275) (cf Occitan literature).
In medieval Germany, the chansons de geste elicited little interest from the German courtly audience, unlike the romances which were much appreciated. While The Song of Roland was among the first French epics to be translated into German (by Konrad der Pfaffe as the Rolandslied, c.1170), and the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach based his (incomplete) 13th century epic Willehalm (consisting of seventy-eight manuscripts) on the Aliscans, a work in the cycle of William of Orange (Eschenbach's work had a great success in Germany), these remained isolated examples. Other than a few other works translated from the cycle of Charlemagne in the 13th century, the chansons de geste were not adapted into German, and it is believed that this was because the epic poems lacked what the romances specialized in portraying: scenes of idealized knighthood, love and courtly society.
In Italy, there exist several 14th-century texts in verse or prose which recount the feats of Charlemagne in Spain, including a chanson de geste in Franco-Venetian, the Entrée d'Espagne (c.1320) (notable for transforming the character of Roland into a knight errant, similar to heroes from the Arthurian romances), and a similar Italian epic La Spagna (1350–1360) in ottava rima. Through such works, the "Matter of France" became an important source of material (albeit significantly transformed) in Italian romantic epics. Morgante (c.1483) by Luigi Pulci, Orlando innamorato (1495) by Matteo Maria Boiardo, Orlando furioso (1516) by Ludovico Ariosto, and Jerusalem Delivered (1581) by Torquato Tasso are all indebted to the French narrative material (the Pulci, Boiardo and Ariosto poems are founded on the legends of the paladins of Charlemagne, and particularly, of Roland, translated as "Orlando").
The incidents and plot devices of the Italian epics later became central to works of English literature such as Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene; Spenser attempted to adapt the form devised to tell the tale of the triumph of Christianity over Islam to tell instead of the triumph of Protestantism over Roman Catholicism.
The Welsh poet, painter, soldier and engraver David Jones's Modernist poem In Parenthesis was described by contemporary critic Herbert Read as having "the heroic ring which we associate with the old chansons de geste".
- Crosland, 1.
- France, Peter (1995). The new Oxford companion to literature in French. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0198661258.
- Hasenohr, 242.
- Holmes, 66.
- La Chanson de Roland, 12.
- Hasenohr, 239.
- Hasenohr, 520–522.
- Holmes, 102–104.
- Holmes, 90–92.
- La Chanson de Roland, 10.
- Hasenohr, 1300.
- Holmes, 68.
- Holmes, 66–67.
- Holmes, 67.
- see also Hasenohr, 239.
- La Chanson de Roland, 11.
- Holmes, 68-9.
- see also Hasenohr, 240.
- Hasenohr, 240.
- This three-way classification of mythology is set out by the twelfth-century poet Jean Bodel in the Chanson de Saisnes: for details see Matter of France.
- La Chanson de Roland, 16–17.
- Hasenohr, 242
- Adam, 45.
- Wittmann, Henri. 1995. "La structure de base de la syntaxe narrative dans les contes et légendes du créole haïtien." Poétiques et imaginaires: francopolyphonie littéraire des Amériques. Edited by Pierre Laurette & Hans-George Ruprecht. Paris: L'Harmattan, pp. 207–218.
- Dorfman, Eugène. 1969. The narreme in the medieval romance epic: An introduction to narrative structures. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- *Tusseau, Jean-Pierre & Henri Wittmann. 1975. "Règles de narration dans les chansons de geste et le roman courtois". Folia linguistica 7.401-12.
- La Chanson de Roland, 12.
- Bumke, 429.
- La Chanson de Roland, 14.
- Bumke, 521-2.
- Bumke, 522.
- see Bumke, 522.
- Brault, 28.
- Brault, 353 (note 166).
- see Brault, 28.
- Adam, 10.
- Recueil général et complet des fabliaux ed. A. de Montaiglon (1872) vol. 1 p. 3
- Martín de Riquer, Los cantares de gesta franceses (1952) pp. 390–404
- Le Roland occitan ed. and tr. Gérard Gouiran, Robert Lafont (1991)
- La geste de Fierabras, le jeu du réel et de l'invraissemblable ed. André de Mandach. Geneva, 1987.
- "Fierabras and Floripas: A French Epic Allegory" ed. and trans. by Michael A.H. Newth. New York: Italica Press, 2010.
- Ed. F. Guessard, S. Luce. Paris: Vieweg, 1862.
- Jehan de Lanson, chanson de geste of the 13th Century ed. J. Vernon Myers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965.
- Ed. A. Thomas. Paris: Société des anciens textes français, 1913.
- Galiens li Restorés ed. Edmund Stengel (1890); Le Galien de Cheltenham ed. D. M. Dougherty, E. B. Barnes. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1981.
- Aiquin ou la conquête de la Bretagne par le roi Charlemagne ed. F. Jacques. Aix-en-Provence: Publications du CUER MA, 1977.
- Raimbert de Paris, La Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche ed. J. Barrois (1842)
- Ed. François Guessard, Henri Michelant. Paris, 1859.
- Simon de Pouille ed. Jeanne Baroin (1968)
- La geste de Beaulande ed. David M. Dougherty, E. B. Barnes (1966)
- Ed. C. Wahlund, H. von Feilitzen. Upsala and Paris, 1895.
- Ed. W. Cloetta. Paris, 1906–13.
- "La chanson de Doon de Nanteuil: fragments inédits" ed. Paul Meyer in Romania vol. 13 (1884)
- Parise la Duchesse ed. G. F. de Martonne (1836); Parise la Duchesse ed. F. Guessard, L. Larchey (1860)
- Gormont et Isembart ed. Alphonse Bayot (1931)
- R. Weeks, "Aïmer le chétif" in PMLA vol. 17 (1902) pp. 411–434.
- Ed. Jacques Normand and Gaston Raynaud. Paris, 1877.
- Adam, 38.
- Haseonohr, 243.
- Hasenohr, 547.
- Hasenohr, 1305.
- Hasenohr, 1320.
- Bumke, 92–93.
- Hasenohr. Article: "Entrée d'Espagne", pp. 412–3.
- Brand, 168.
- (in French) Antoine Adam, Georges Lerminier, and Édouard Morot-Sir, eds. Littérature française. "Tome 1: Des origines à la fin du XVIIIe siècle," Paris: Larousse, 1967.
- Peter Brand and Lino Pertile, eds. The Cambridge History of Italian Literature Cambridge. 1996; revised edition: 1999. ISBN 0-521-66622-8
- Gerard J. Brault. The Song of Roland: An Analytical Edition. Tome I: Introduction and Commentary. Pennsylvania State University, 1978. ISBN 0-271-00516-5
- Joachim Bumke. Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages. English translation: 1991. The Overlook Press: New York, 2000. ISBN 1-58567-051-0
- Jesse Crosland. The Old French Epic. New York: Haskell House, 1951.
- (in French) Geneviève Hasenohr and Michel Zink, eds. Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: Le Moyen Age. Collection: La Pochothèque. Paris: Fayard, 1992. ISBN 2-253-05662-6
- Urban T. Holmes Jr. A History of Old French Literature from the Origins to 1300. New York: F.S. Crofts, 1938.
- (in French) La Chanson de Roland. Edited and Translated into Modern French by Ian Short. Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990. p. 12. ISBN 978-2-253-05341-5
|Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Chansons de Geste.|
- La Chanson de Geste, with useful references (in French)