Rue Chappe: the name
Named after French engineer Claude Chappe who in 1792, with his brothers, set up across France a network of optical semaphore stations - a system of communicating using towers with movable shutters which arranged in different positions indicated different words in code. The system was used for military and national communications until the 1850s.
Depressed by illness and disputes about whether he had plagiarised the system from others Claude Chappe committed suicide in Paris by throwing himself down a well at his hotel.
