Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/814

796 The telegraph was thus finally officially founded.

But on the 23d of January, 1805, the unfortunate Claude Chappe, tortured by a cancer in the ear, committed suicide by throwing himself in the pits of the hôtel des télégraphes, rue de Grenelle-Saint-Germain 103. He was aged only forty-two years.



A stone which is still in the court of the hotel, near the central post, bears this simple inscription: ""

In 1844 the aërial network had in France a stretch of five thousand kilometres, and comprised five hundred and thirty-four stations. It was henceforth not to increase, because the first trials of the electric telegraph were taking place in Albion, and had created an immense sensation.

An order of the 23d of November, 1844, opened an