Misplaced Pages

#699300

140-468: The massacres began in the Ottoman interior in 1894, before they became more widespread in the following years. The majority of the murders took place between 1894 and 1896. The massacres began to taper off in 1897, following international condemnation of Abdul Hamid. The harshest measures were directed against the long persecuted Armenian community as its calls for civil reform and better treatment were ignored by

280-474: A Telex was a message sent by a Telex network, a switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network. A wirephoto or wire picture 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 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

420-448: A code by itself. The term heliostat is sometimes used as a synonym for heliograph because of this origin. The Colomb shutter ( Bolton and Colomb , 1862) was originally invented to enable the transmission of morse code by signal lamp between Royal Navy ships at sea. The heliograph was heavily used by Nelson A. Miles in Arizona and New Mexico after he took over command (1886) of

560-466: A distance of a quarter of a mile. In the 1890s inventor Nikola Tesla worked on an air and ground conduction wireless electric power transmission system , similar to Loomis', which he planned to include wireless telegraphy. Tesla's experiments had led him to incorrectly conclude that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy and his 1901 large scale application of his ideas,

700-446: 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)

840-514: A document from the same years, "the skulls of small children were smashed with rocks, the bodies of girls and women who resisted rape were chopped into pieces live, men were mostly beheaded, and the clergy skinned or burnt alive". The uniform ranking system was based on the 1861 patterns of cuff chevrons. Several ceremonies took place for the Hamidiye, where they wore elegant uniforms showing their ranks and accomplishments. The new uniforms were to take

980-523: A few Turkish towns… I'd keel-haul every blithering mother's son of a Turk that wears hair." Americans on the mainland, such as Julia Ward Howe , David Josiah Brewer , and John D. Rockefeller , donated and raised large amounts of money and organized relief aid that was channeled to the Armenians via the newly established American Red Cross . Other humanitarian groups and the Red Cross helped by sending aid to

1120-473: A few days, sometimes taking all day to send a message despite the use of the highly sensitive mirror galvanometer developed by William Thomson (the future Lord Kelvin ) before being destroyed by applying too high a voltage. Its failure and slow speed of transmission prompted Thomson and Oliver Heaviside to find better mathematical descriptions of long transmission lines . The company finally succeeded in 1866 with an improved cable laid by SS Great Eastern ,

1260-680: A high-voltage wireless power station, now called Wardenclyffe Tower , lost funding and was abandoned after a few years. Telegraphic communication using earth conductivity was eventually found to be limited to impractically short distances, as was communication conducted through water, or between trenches during World War I. Hamidiye (cavalry) The Hamidiye regiments (literally meaning "belonging to Hamid ", full official name Hamidiye Hafif Süvari Alayları , Hamidiye Light Cavalry Regiments) were well-armed, irregular, mainly Sunni Kurdish but also Turkish , Circassian , Turkmen , Yörük , and Arab cavalry formations that operated in

1400-570: A lengthy letter to The Times : What I myself saw this Friday afternoon [November 1] is forever engraven on my mind as the most horrible sight a man can see. I went with one of the cavasses of the English Legation, a soldier, my interpreter, and a photographer (Armenian) to the Gregorian [i.e., Armenian Apostolic ] Cemetery ....Along the wall on the north, in a row 20 ft (6 m) wide and 150 ft (46 m) long, lay 321 dead bodies of

1540-635: A local mosque and claiming the Armenians had the aim of "striking at Islam". Sultan Abdul Hamid sent the Ottoman army into the area and also armed groups of Kurdish irregulars. The violence spread and affected most of the Armenian towns in the Ottoman Empire. The Great Powers (Britain, France, Russia) forced Hamid to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye in October 1895 which, like

SECTION 10

#1732844364700

1680-540: A message was relayed 640 km (400 mi) in four hours. Miles' enemies used smoke signals and flashes of sunlight from metal, but lacked a sophisticated telegraph code. The heliograph was ideal for use in the American Southwest due to its clear air and mountainous terrain on which stations could be located. It was found necessary to lengthen the morse dash (which is much shorter in American Morse code than in

1820-543: A method of telegraphy, whereas pigeon post is not. Ancient signalling systems, although sometimes quite extensive and sophisticated as in China, were generally not capable of transmitting arbitrary text messages. Possible messages were fixed and predetermined, so such systems are thus not true telegraphs. The earliest true telegraph put into widespread use was the Chappe telegraph , an optical telegraph invented by Claude Chappe in

1960-502: A million pillaged and plundered. A similar figure is cited by the French diplomatic historian Pierre Renouvin who claimed that 250,000 Armenians died based on authenticated documents while serving his duty. Besides Armenians, some 25,000 Assyrians also lost their lives during the Diyarbekir massacres . In addition to the death toll many Armenians converted to Islam in an attempt to escape

2100-440: A modification of surveying equipment ( Gauss , 1821). Various uses of mirrors were made for communication in the following years, mostly for military purposes, but the first device to become widely used was a heliograph with a moveable mirror ( Mance , 1869). The system was used by the French during the 1870–71 siege of Paris , with night-time signalling using kerosene lamps as the source of light. An improved version (Begbie, 1870)

2240-592: A natural rubber from the Palaquium gutta tree, after William Montgomerie sent samples to London from Singapore in 1843. The new material was tested by Michael Faraday and in 1845 Wheatstone suggested that it should be used on the cable planned between Dover and Calais by John Watkins Brett . The idea was proved viable when the South Eastern Railway company successfully tested a three-kilometre (two-mile) gutta-percha insulated cable with telegraph messages to

2380-620: A one-word telegram: 'No'. Despite the great public sympathy that was felt for the Armenians in Europe, none of the European powers took concrete action to alleviate their plight. Frustrated with their indifference and failure to take action, Armenians from the ARF seized the European-managed Ottoman Bank on August 26, 1896 to bring the massacres to their full attention. The action resulted in

2520-704: A policy of severity and terror against the Armenians, and in order to succeed in this respect he elected the method of dealing them an economic blow... he ordered that they absolutely avoid negotiating or discussing anything with the Armenians and that they inflict upon them a decisive strike to settle scores." The killings continued until 1897. In that last year, Sultan Hamid declared the Armenian Question closed. Many Armenian revolutionaries had either been killed or escaped to Russia. The Ottoman government closed Armenian societies and restricted Armenian political movements. Some non-Armenian groups were also attacked during

2660-485: A popular means of sending messages once telegraph prices had fallen sufficiently. Traffic became high enough to spur the development of automated systems— teleprinters and punched tape transmission. These systems led to new telegraph codes , starting with the Baudot code . However, telegrams were never able to compete with the letter post on price, and competition from the telephone , which removed their speed advantage, drove

2800-457: A righteous thing to destroy and seize the lives and property of the Armenians." The combination of Russian military success in the recent Russo-Turkish War , the clear weakening of the Ottoman Empire in various spheres including financial spheres (from 1873, the Ottoman Empire suffered greatly from the Panic of 1873 ), territorial (mentioned above), and the hope among some Armenians that one day all of

2940-479: A second time... and yet it is from an official document which the future historian will read when he wishes to compile the facts concerning those massacres. Official Ottoman sources downplayed or misrepresented the death toll numbers. The attempt of deliberately misrepresenting the numbers were noted by British Ambassador Phillip Currie in a letter to Prime Minister Lord Salisbury : The Sultan lately sent to me, in common with my colleagues, an urgent message inviting

SECTION 20

#1732844364700

3080-596: A ship off the coast of Folkestone . The cable to France was laid in 1850 but was almost immediately severed by a French fishing vessel. It was relaid the next year and connections to Ireland and the Low Countries soon followed. Getting a cable across the Atlantic Ocean proved much more difficult. The Atlantic Telegraph Company , formed in London in 1856, had several failed attempts. A cable laid in 1858 worked poorly for

3220-440: A single-needle telegraph was adapted to indicate just two messages: "Line Clear" and "Line Blocked". The signaller would adjust his line-side signals accordingly. As first implemented in 1844 each station had as many needles as there were stations on the line, giving a complete picture of the traffic. As lines expanded, a sequence of pairs of single-needle instruments were adopted, one pair for each block in each direction. Wigwag

3360-640: A substantial distance was by Ronalds in 1816 using an electrostatic generator . Ronalds offered his invention to the British Admiralty , but it was rejected as unnecessary, the existing optical telegraph connecting the Admiralty in London to their main fleet base in Portsmouth being deemed adequate for their purposes. As late as 1844, after the electrical telegraph had come into use, the Admiralty's optical telegraph

3500-418: A system for mass distributing information on current price of publicly listed companies. In a punched-tape system, the message is first typed onto punched tape using the code of the telegraph system—Morse code for instance. It is then, either immediately or at some later time, run through a transmission machine which sends the message to the telegraph network. Multiple messages can be sequentially recorded on

3640-503: 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 (10 mi). The first means used a combination of black and white panels, clocks, telescopes, and codebooks to send their message. In 1792, Claude

3780-534: A telefax machine. In 1855, an Italian priest, 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

3920-461: A telegraph between St Petersburg and Kronstadt , but it was never completed. The first operative electric telegraph ( Gauss and Weber , 1833) connected Göttingen Observatory to the Institute of Physics about 1 km away during experimental investigations of the geomagnetic field. The first commercial telegraph was by Cooke and Wheatstone following their English patent of 10 June 1837. It

4060-465: Is a form of flag signalling using a single flag. Unlike most forms of flag signalling, which are used over relatively short distances, wigwag is designed to maximise the distance covered—up to 32 km (20 mi) in some cases. Wigwag achieved this by using a large flag—a single flag can be held with both hands unlike flag semaphore which has a flag in each hand—and using motions rather than positions as its symbols since motions are more easily seen. It

4200-512: Is a telegraph consisting of a line of stations in towers or natural high points which signal to each other by means of shutters or paddles. Signalling by means of indicator pointers was called semaphore . 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. The first successful optical telegraph network

4340-458: Is a telegraph machine that can send messages from a typewriter-like keyboard and print incoming messages in readable text with no need for the operators to be trained in the telegraph code used on the line. It developed from various earlier printing telegraphs and resulted in improved transmission speeds. The Morse telegraph (1837) was originally conceived as a system marking indentations on paper tape. A chemical telegraph making blue marks improved

Hamidian massacres - Misplaced Pages Continue

4480-506: Is also considered the last sultan to have full control over Ottoman Empire . His reign struggled with the culmination of 75 years of change throughout the empire and an opposing reaction to that change. Abdul Hamid II was particularly concerned with the centralization of the empire. His efforts to centralize the Sublime Porte were not unheard of among other sultans. The Ottoman Empire's local provinces had more control over their areas than

4620-417: Is impossible to ascertain how many Armenians were killed, although the figures cited by historians have ranged from 80,000 to 300,000. The German pastor Johannes Lepsius meticulously collected data on the destruction and in his calculations, counted the deaths of 88,243 Armenians, the destitution of 546,000, the destruction of 2,493 villages, the residents of 646 of which were forcibly converted to Islam, and

4760-447: Is that it permits duplex communication. The Wheatstone tape reader was capable of a speed of 400 words per minute. A worldwide communication network meant that telegraph cables would have to be laid across oceans. On land cables could be run uninsulated suspended from poles. Underwater, a good insulator that was both flexible and capable of resisting the ingress of seawater was required. A solution presented itself with gutta-percha ,

4900-625: 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

5040-823: The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (the ARF or Dashnaktsutiun, founded in 1890 in Tiflis ). Clashes ensued and unrest occurred in 1892 at Merzifon and in 1893 at Tokat . In 1894 the sultan began to target the Armenian people in a precursor to the Hamidian massacres. This persecution strengthened nationalistic sentiment among Armenians. The first notable battle in the Armenian resistance took place in Sasun . Hunchak activists, such as Mihran Damadian , Hampartsoum Boyadjian , and Hrayr Dzhoghk , encouraged resistance against double taxation and Ottoman persecution. The ARF armed

5180-588: The Armenian massacres of 1894-96 had been often ascribed to the Hamidiye regiments, particularly during the bloody suppression of the revolt of the Armenians of Sasun (1894). After Sultan Abdul Hamid II 's reign, the cavalry was not dissolved but given a new name, the Tribal Light Cavalry Regiments. Sultan Abdul Hamid II 's reign has the reputation of being "the most despotic and centralized era in modern Ottoman History". Sultan Abdul Hamid II

5320-648: 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

5460-499: The First Macedonian War . Nothing else that could be described as a true telegraph existed until the 17th century. Possibly the first alphabetic telegraph code in the modern era is due to Franz Kessler who published his work in 1616. Kessler used a lamp placed inside a barrel with a moveable shutter operated by the signaller. The signals were observed at a distance with the newly invented telescope. An optical telegraph

5600-519: The London and Birmingham Railway line's chief engineer. The messages were for the operation of the rope-haulage system for pulling trains up the 1 in 77 bank. The world's first permanent railway telegraph was completed in July 1839 between London Paddington and West Drayton on the Great Western Railway with an electric telegraph using a four-needle system. The concept of a signalling "block" system

5740-645: The Russo-Ottoman war in 1877-1878 the six eastern provinces were left under the control of several non-state actors with spheres of interest of Kurdish tribes and Armenian revolutionaries. The Armenian revolutionaries posed a threat because they were seen as disruptive, and they could work with the Russians against the Ottoman Empire. The first Armenian revolutionary party was the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party . The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party

Hamidian massacres - Misplaced Pages Continue

5880-520: The Tang dynasty (618–907) a message could be sent 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) in 24 hours. The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) added artillery to the possible signals. While the signalling was complex (for instance, different-coloured flags could be used to indicate enemy strength), only predetermined messages could be sent. The Chinese signalling system extended well beyond the Great Wall. Signal towers away from

6020-508: The "social, economic, and political transformations" in Kurdish societies. The Hamidiye received several benefits for their participation. They were able to seize much of the lands they occupied, whether lawful or not. The Hamidiye were protected during their annual migrations (periods when they took care of their livestock). They were supplied with the most advanced weapons from the state, and were given armed escorts. The Hamidiye stole money from

6160-567: The 'rayah' [subject] Christian attempts, by having recourse to foreign powers, to overstep the limits of privileges allowed to them by their Mussulman masters, and free themselves from their bondage, their lives and property are to be forfeited, and are at the mercy of the Mussulmans. To the Turkish mind, the Armenians had tried to overstep these limits by appealing to foreign powers, especially England. They, therefore, considered it their religious duty and

6300-504: The 112 in the Stamboul [old city of Constantinople] prison were represented as being Muslims, and it was only discovered by accident that 109 were Christians. Some scholars, such as the Soviet historians Mkrtich G. Nersisyan, Ruben Sahakyan , John Kirakosyan , and Yehuda Bauer , and most recently Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi in their book The Thirty-Year Genocide , subscribe to the view that

6440-465: 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

6580-530: 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

6720-421: The Armenian delegation's visit to Berlin in 1878, he bitterly remarked, "Such great impudence ... Such great treachery toward religion and state ... May they be cursed upon by God." While he admitted that some of their complaints were well-founded, he likened the Armenians to "hired female mourners [ pleureuses ] who simulate a pain which they do not feel; they are an effeminate and cowardly people who hide behind

6860-434: The Armenian territory might be ruled by Russia, led to a new restiveness among Armenians who were living inside the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians sent a delegation which was led by Mkrtich Khrimian to the 1878 Congress of Berlin to lobby the European powers to include proper safeguards for their kinsmen in the eventual peace agreement. But the sultan was not prepared to relinquish any of his power. Abdul Hamid believed that

7000-623: The Armenians and to remove, "if not by political action then by resort to the knife... the fever spot of the Turkish Empire." King Leopold II of Belgium told British Prime Minister Salisbury that he was prepared to send his Congolese Force Publique to "invade and occupy" Armenia. The massacres were an important item on the agenda of the United States President Grover Cleveland , and in his presidential platform for 1896, Republican candidate William McKinley listed

7140-556: The Armenians of Anatolia, including demands for equal rights and a push for autonomy, the Ottoman leadership believed that the empire's Islamic character and even its very existence were threatened. The chief dragoman (Turkish interpreter) of the British embassy wrote that the reason the Ottomans committed these atrocities was because they were "guided in their general action by the prescriptions of Sheri [Sharia] Law. That law prescribes that if

SECTION 50

#1732844364700

7280-602: The Berlin treaty, was never implemented. On October 1, 1895, two thousand Armenians assembled in Constantinople (now Istanbul ) to petition for the implementation of the reforms, but Ottoman police units converged on the rally and violently broke it up. Upon receiving the reform package, the sultan is said to have remarked, "This business will end in blood." Soon massacres of Armenians broke out in Constantinople and then engulfed

7420-475: The British government followed—by March 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 km ( 3 + 1 ⁄ 2  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 . His star rising, he was soon sending signals across

7560-572: The Christians' expense and to satisfy their men's whims." One headline in a September 1895 article by The New York Times ran "Armenian Holocaust," while the Catholic World declared, "Not all the perfume of Arabia can wash the hand of Turkey clean enough to be suffered any longer to hold the reins of power over one inch of Christian territory." The rest of the American press called for action to help

7700-448: The European influence onto the empire. Abdul Hamid II's policies essentially isolated the Ottoman Empire, which further aided in its decline. Several of the elite who sought a new constitution and reform for the empire were forced to flee to Europe. After the Treaty of Berlin (1878) , the Ottoman Empire began to contract and it lost certain territories. New groups of radicals began to threaten

7840-537: The Hamidiye received benefits as well, they rose in power with the money and land they acquired illegally. Abdul Hamid II. wanted to create a relationship of commitment and loyalty with the Kurds that were chosen to make up the Hamidiye Cavalry. The Hamidiye was divided into groups according to age: the ibtidaiye (ages 17–20), the nizamiye (age 20–32), and the redif (age 32–40). An Ottoman diplomat, close advisor to

7980-462: The Morse system connected Baltimore to Washington , and by 1861 the west coast of the continent was connected to the east coast. The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph , in a series of improvements, also ended up with a one-wire system, but still using their own code and needle displays . The electric telegraph quickly became a means of more general communication. The Morse system was officially adopted as

8120-470: The Ottoman Empire and bolstering British ties to Russia. The French ambassador described Turkey as "literally in flames," with "massacres everywhere" and all Christians being murdered "without distinction." A French vice consul declared that the Ottoman Empire was "gradually annihilating the Christian element" by "giving the Kurdish chieftains carte blanche to do whatever they please, to enrich themselves at

8260-409: The Ottoman Empire were historically insecure; the Kurdish rebels attacked the inhabitants of towns and villages with impunity. In 1890–91, at a time when the empire was either too weak and disorganized or reluctant to halt them, Sultan Abdul Hamid gave semi-official status to the Kurdish bandits. Made up mainly of Kurdish tribes, but also of Turks, Yörüks , Arabs, Turkmens and Circassians, and armed by

8400-537: The Ottoman government. The corruption, chaos, and destruction caused by the Hamidiye is a direct cause of their lack of order and control. No guidelines in the Hamidiye cavalry led some of its members to not be a part of the indulgences that came with the corruption. Ottoman soldiers described the some Hamidiye as "miserable, hungry, and sometimes poorly clothed." The Hamidiye's performance was due to their "lack of professionalism superimposed on an emotionally charged mission requiring highly disciplined troops." The cavalry

8540-644: The Sultan and Armenian party activists in France, Britain, Austria and elsewhere. "Under no circumstances," he wrote to Max Nordau , "are the Armenians to learn that we want to use them in order to erect a Jewish state." Herzl's courting the Sultan's favor was protested by other Zionists. Bernard Lazare published an open letter critical of Herzl and resigned from the Zionist Action Committee in 1899. The one fellow leader Herzl sought to enlist, Max Nordau, replied with

SECTION 60

#1732844364700

8680-532: The Sultan has any means of knowing about it. It is a most remarkable story, and the discrepancies are as thick as leaves in Valambrosa. On the face of it, it cannot be true, and before a jury it would hardly have any weight as evidence. It is extremely important, however, because it is probably a fair representation of the occurrences of the last few years. That it is a misrepresentation, so much so that it can fairly be called fabrication, becomes clear when you look at it

8820-612: The United States by Samuel Morse . The electric telegraph was slower to develop in France due to the established optical telegraph system, but an electrical telegraph was put into use with a code compatible with the Chappe optical telegraph. The Morse system was adopted as the international standard in 1865, using a modified Morse code developed in Germany in 1848. The heliograph is a telegraph system using reflected sunlight for signalling. It

8960-466: The act was lauded by the European and American press, which vilified Hamid and painted him as the "great assassin" and "bloody Sultan." The Great Powers vowed to take action and enforce new reforms, although these never came to fruition due to conflicting political and economic interests. After George Hepworth , a preeminent journalist of the late 19th century, traveled through Ottoman Armenia in 1897, he wrote Through Armenia on Horseback , which discusses

9100-482: The attackers "as cowardly as they were cruel. They refused to attack where people defended themselves and instead concentrated on defenseless districts." The worst atrocity took place in Urfa , where Ottoman troops burned the Armenian cathedral, in which 3,000 Armenians had taken refuge, and shot at anyone who tried to escape. Abdul Hamid's private first secretary wrote in his memoirs about Abdul Hamid that he "decided to pursue

9240-562: The causes and effects of the recent massacres. In one chapter Hepworth describes the disparity between the reality of the Massacre in Bitlis and the official reports that were sent to the Porte . After retelling the Ottoman version of events, which places the blame solely on the Armenians of Bitlis, Hepworth writes: …That is the account of the affair which was sent to Yildiz, and that story contains all that

9380-484: The central government. Sultan Abdul Hamid II's foreign relations came from a "policy of non-commitment." The sultan understood the fragility of the Ottoman military, and the Empire's weaknesses of its domestic control. Pan-Islamism became Sultan Abdülhamid's solution to the empire's loss of identity and power. His efforts to promote Pan-Islamism were for the most part unsuccessful because of the large non-Muslim population, and

9520-487: The clothes of the great powers and raise an outcry for the smallest of causes." The provisions for reform in the Armenian provinces embodied in Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin (1878) were ultimately not enforced and were followed instead by further repression. On January 2, 1881, collective notes sent by the European powers reminding the sultan of the promises of reform failed to prod him into action. The eastern provinces of

9660-438: The 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

9800-411: The coordinates of the letter of the alphabet being transmitted. The number of said torches held up signalled the grid square that contained the letter. There is no definite record of the system ever being used, but there are several passages in ancient texts that some think are suggestive. Holzmann and Pehrson, for instance, suggest that Livy is describing its use by Philip V of Macedon in 207 BC during

9940-412: The corpses had been rifled of all their clothes except a cotton undergarment or two....To be killed in battle by brave men is one thing; to be butchered by cowardly armed soldiers in cold blood and utterly defenseless is another thing. The French vice consul of Diyarbakır , Gustave Meyrier, recounted to Ambassador Paul Cambon stories of Armenian women and children being assaulted and killed and described

10080-516: The deaths of ten of the Armenian militants, Ottoman soldiers and the massacre of 6,000 Armenian civilians living in Constantinople by Ottomans. According to the foreign diplomats in Constantinople, Ottoman central authorities instructed the mob "to start killing Armenians, irrespective of age and gender, for the duration of 48 hours." The killings stopped only when the mob was ordered to desist from such activity by Sultan Hamid. Though their demands were rejected and new massacres broke out in Constantinople,

10220-516: The desecration of 645 churches and monasteries, of which 328 were converted into mosques. He also estimated the additional deaths of 100,000 Armenians due to famine and disease totalling a number of approximately 200,000. In contrast the ambassador of Britain estimated 100,000 were killed up until early December 1895. However, the period of massacres spread well into 1896. German foreign ministry operative and Turkologist Ernst Jäckh claimed that 200,000 Armenians were killed and 50,000 were expelled and

10360-684: The dogs... Mother, I am safe and sound. Father, 20 days ago we made war on the Armenian unbelievers. Through God's grace no harm befell us... .There is a rumour afoot that our Batallion will be ordered to your part of the world—if so, we will kill all the Armenians there. Besides, 511 Armenians were wounded, one or two perish every day. If you ask after the soldiers and bashi bozouks [wild irregulars], not one of their noses has bled... May God bless you.... Another letter from December 23, 1895 says: I killed [the Armenians] like dogs... .If you ask news in this manner, we slew 2,500 Armenians and looted their goods It

10500-531: The erroneous belief that there was an electrified atmospheric stratum accessible at low altitude. They thought atmosphere current, connected with a return path using "Earth currents" would allow for wireless telegraphy as well as supply power for the telegraph, doing away with artificial batteries. A more practical demonstration of wireless transmission via conduction came in Amos Dolbear 's 1879 magneto electric telephone that used ground conduction to transmit over

10640-553: The fight against Geronimo and other Apache bands in the Apache Wars . Miles had previously set up the first heliograph line in the US between Fort Keogh and Fort Custer in Montana . He used the heliograph to fill in vast, thinly populated areas that were not covered by the electric telegraph. Twenty-six stations covered an area 320 by 480 km (200 by 300 mi). In a test of the system,

10780-618: 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 RMS  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." The successful development of radiotelegraphy

10920-421: The government in the mid-1860s and early 1870s. They pressed for an end to the usurpation of their land, "the looting and murder in Armenian towns by Kurds and Circassians , improprieties during tax collection, criminal behavior by government officials and the refusal to accept Christians as witnesses in trial." These requests went unheeded by the central government. When a nascent form of nationalism spread among

11060-413: The government. The Ottomans made no allowances for the victims on account of their age or gender, and as a result, they massacred all of the victims with brutal force. The telegraph spread news of the massacres around the world, leading to a significant amount of coverage of them in the media of Western Europe, Russian Empire and North America. The origins of the hostility towards the Armenians lay in

11200-640: The ground without any wires connecting the stations. Other attempts were made to send the electric current through bodies of water, to span rivers, for example. Prominent experimenters along these lines included Samuel F. B. Morse in the United States and James Bowman Lindsay in Great Britain, who in August 1854, was able to demonstrate transmission across a mill dam at a distance of 500 yards (457 metres). US inventors William Henry Ward (1871) and Mahlon Loomis (1872) developed electrical conduction systems based on

11340-408: The hidden agenda of eventually eliminating the Armenians. Regions with high Armenian revolutionary actions were targets for the Hamidiye. The Hamidiye created an "Armenian Conspiracy" to justify their reasons for killing the Armenians. According to some estimates, about ten to twenty thousand Armenians were slaughtered by the Hamidiye units. According to Janet Klein, Hamidiye units were involved in

11480-419: 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

11620-555: The increasingly precarious position in which the Ottoman Empire found itself in the last quarter of the 19th century. The end of Ottoman domination of the Balkans was ushered in by an era of European nationalism and an insistence on self-determination by the inhabitants of many territories which had been ruled by the Ottomans for an extremely long period of time. The Armenians of the empire, who were always considered second-class citizens, had begun to ask for civil reforms and better treatment by

11760-534: The large scale massacres and violence against Armenians in the period 1894-96 and 1915, and they were also "implicated in mass murder, deportation and looting" during the First World War. According to Richar G. Hovannisian , an Armenian-American, the Ottoman armed forces and Hamidiye units slaughtered Assyrians in the Tur Abdin region in 1915. It is estimated that ten thousand Assyrians were killed, and according to

11900-495: The largest ship of its day, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel . 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 . From

12040-579: The late 18th century. The system was used extensively in France, and European nations occupied by France, during the Napoleonic era . The electric telegraph started to replace the optical telegraph in the mid-19th century. It was first taken up in Britain in the form of the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph , initially used mostly as an aid to railway signalling . This was quickly followed by a different system developed in

12180-421: The line at his own expense and agreed that the railway could have free use of it in exchange for the right to open it up to the public. Most of the early electrical systems required multiple wires (Ronalds' system was an exception), but the system developed in the United States by Morse and Vail was a single-wire system. This was the system that first used the soon-to-become-ubiquitous Morse code . By 1844,

12320-400: The mass killings of 1894–1896 marked the first phase of the Armenian genocide . Most scholars, however, limit this definition strictly to the years 1915–1923. Telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is

12460-508: The massacred Armenians. Many were fearfully mangled and mutilated. I saw one with his face completely smashed in with a blow of some heavy weapon after he was killed. I saw some with their own necks almost severed by a sword cut. One I saw whose whole chest had been skinned, his fore-arms were cut off, while the upper arm was skinned of flesh. I asked if the dogs had done this. "No, the Turks did it with their knives." A dozen bodies were half burned. All

12600-508: The massacres. The French diplomatic correspondence shows that the Hamidiye carried out massacres not only of Armenians but also of Assyrians living in Diyarbakir, Hasankeyf , Sivas and other parts of Anatolia. A letter sent by an Ottoman soldier to his brother and parents in November 23, 1895 says: My brother, if you want news from here we have killed 1,200 Armenians, all of them as food for

12740-517: The method used for transmission. Passing messages by signalling over distance is an ancient practice. One of the oldest examples is the signal towers of the Great Wall of China . In 400 BC , signals could be sent by beacon fires or drum beats . By 200 BC complex flag signalling had developed, and by the Han dynasty (200 BC – 220 AD) signallers had a choice of lights, flags, or gunshots to send signals. By

12880-559: The modern International Morse code) to aid differentiating from the morse dot. Use of the heliograph declined from 1915 onwards, but remained in service in Britain and British Commonwealth countries for some time. Australian forces used the heliograph as late as 1942 in the Western Desert Campaign of World War II . Some form of heliograph was used by the mujahideen in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989). A teleprinter

13020-434: The people of the region. The Armenians confronted the Ottoman army and Kurdish irregulars at Sasun, finally succumbing to superior numbers and to Turkish assurances of amnesty, which never materialized. In response to the resistance at Sasun, the governor of Mush responded by inciting the local Muslims against the Armenians. Historian Lord Kinross wrote that massacres of this kind were often achieved by gathering Muslims in

13160-526: The place of the colorful uniforms previously worn by the Kurds. Its purpose was to create an identity for the Hamidiye who were spread across the frontiers of the empire. Other than this, the Ottoman army was greatly influenced by the Circassians . They wore cherkeska and they were armed with shashka Circassian swords and Caucasian dagger. They sometimes consisted of grey tunics or waist-belts, grey trousers with

13300-399: The possible messages. One of the few for which details are known is a system invented by Aeneas Tacticus (4th century BC). Tacticus's system had water filled pots at the two signal stations which were drained in synchronisation. Annotation on a floating scale indicated which message was being sent or received. Signals sent by means of torches indicated when to start and stop draining to keep

13440-477: The power of the Ottoman Empire. The Hamidiye regiments were established in 1891 following a decree published in November 1890. There are several reasons advanced as to why the Hamidiye light cavalry was created. The establishment of the Hamidiye was in one part a response to the Russian threat, although some scholars believe that the central reason was to suppress Armenian socialist/nationalist revolutionaries. After

13580-463: The press alike. British print and illustrated newspapers regularly covered the massacres, with the popular weekly Punch publishing dozens of cartoons depicting the carnage. Further, historian Leslie Rogne Schumacher notes that the massacres "reflected and impacted the changing world of European international relations" in the years before the First World War , weakening Britain's relationship with

13720-496: The remaining survivors who were dying of disease and hunger. At the height of the massacres, in 1896, Abdul Hamid tried to limit the flow of information coming out of Turkey ( Harper's Weekly was banned by Ottoman censors for its extensive coverage of the massacres) and counteract the negative press by enlisting the help of sympathetic Western activists and journalists. Theodor Herzl responded enthusiastically to Abdul Hamid's personal request to harness "Jewish power" to undermine

13860-541: The rest of the Armenian-populated vilayets of Bitlis , Diyarbekir , Erzurum , Mamuret-ul-Aziz , Sivas , Trebizond and Van . Thousands were killed at the hands of their Muslim neighbours and government soldiers, and many more died during the cold winter of 1895–96. William Sachtleben , an American journalist who happened to be in Erzurum after the massacre there in 1895, recounted the grisly scene he came across in

14000-419: The same run of tape. The advantage of doing this is that messages can be sent at a steady, fast rate making maximum use of the available telegraph lines. The economic advantage of doing this is greatest on long, busy routes where the cost of the extra step of preparing the tape is outweighed by the cost of providing more telegraph lines. The first machine to use punched tape was Bain's teleprinter (Bain, 1843), but

14140-647: The saving of the Armenians as one of his top priorities in foreign policy. Americans in the Ottoman Empire, such as George Washburn, then-president of the Constantinople-based Robert College , pressured their government to take concrete action. In December 1900, the battleship USS Kentucky called at the port of Smyrna , where its captain, "Red Bill" Kirkland, delivered the following warning, somewhat softened by his translator, to its governor: "If these massacres continue I'll be swuzzled if I won't someday forget my order… and find some pretext to hammer

14280-453: The six Representatives to visit the military and municipal hospitals to see for themselves the number of Turkish soldiers and civilians who had been wounded during the recent disturbances. I accordingly requested Surgeon Tomlinson, of Her Majesty's ship "Imogene" , to make the round of the hospitals in company with Mr. Blech, of Her Majesty's Embassy... The hospital authorities made attempts to pass off wounded Christians as Mussulmans. Thus,

14420-672: The south eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire . Established by and named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1891, they were intended to be modeled after the Cossacks and were supposedly tasked to patrol the Russo-Ottoman frontier. However, the Hamidiye were more often used by the Ottoman authorities to harass and assault Armenians living in Eastern Provinces of the Ottoman Empire ( Western Armenia in some sources). A major role in

14560-403: The speed of recording ( Bain , 1846), but was delayed by a patent challenge from Morse. The first true printing telegraph (that is printing in plain text) used a spinning wheel of types in the manner of a daisy wheel printer ( House , 1846, improved by Hughes , 1855). The system was adopted by Western Union . Early teleprinters used the Baudot code , a five-bit sequential binary code. This

14700-568: The standard for continental European telegraphy in 1851 with a revised code, which later became the basis of International Morse Code . However, Great Britain and the British Empire continued to use the Cooke and Wheatstone system, in some places as late as the 1930s. Likewise, the United States continued to use American Morse code internally, requiring translation operators skilled in both codes for international messages. Railway signal telegraphy

14840-568: The state, they came to be called the Hamidiye Alaylari (" Hamidian Regiments"). The Hamidiye and Kurdish brigands were given free rein to attack Armenians, confiscating stores of grain, foodstuffs, and driving off livestock, confident of escaping punishment as they were subjects of military courts only. Armenians established revolutionary organizations, namely the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (Hunchak; founded in Switzerland in 1887) and

14980-633: The sultan, and contributor to the creation of the Hamidiye Light Cavalry was Şakir Pasa , was put in charge of the Hamidiye following the massacres against Armenians in 1895–1896. The Kurdish Hamidiye commanders were given exceptional rights to negotiate with the Sultan. Notable commanders were I brahim Pasha , Hacı Musa Beg  [ tr ] or Kör Hüseyin Pasha. Over time the Russians forged relationships with Armenian revolutionaries, and with Kurdish tribal leaders. The Ottoman Empire understood

15120-462: The synchronisation. None of the signalling systems discussed above are true telegraphs in the sense of a system that can transmit arbitrary messages over arbitrary distances. Lines of signalling relay stations can send messages to any required distance, but all these systems are limited to one extent or another in the range of messages that they can send. A system like flag semaphore , with an alphabetic code, can certainly send any given message, but

15260-554: The system is designed for short-range communication between two persons. An engine order telegraph , used to send instructions from the bridge of a ship to the engine room, fails to meet both criteria; it has a limited distance and very simple message set. There was only one ancient signalling system described that does meet these criteria. That was a system using the Polybius square to encode an alphabet. Polybius (2nd century BC) suggested using two successive groups of torches to identify

15400-602: The system saw only limited use. Later versions of Bain's system achieved speeds up to 1000 words per minute, far faster than a human operator could achieve. The first widely used system (Wheatstone, 1858) was first put into service with the British General Post Office in 1867. A novel feature of the Wheatstone system was the use of bipolar encoding . That is, both positive and negative polarity voltages were used. Bipolar encoding has several advantages, one of which

15540-405: The telegraph into decline from 1920 onwards. The few remaining telegraph applications were largely taken over by alternatives on the internet towards the end of the 20th century. The word telegraph (from Ancient Greek : τῆλε ( têle ) 'at a distance' and γράφειν ( gráphein ) 'to write') was coined by the French inventor of the semaphore telegraph , Claude Chappe , who also coined

15680-435: The threat this created and is in large part why they chose the Kurds to make-up the Hamidiye. The Kurdish population could potentially unite with the Russians, but with the formation of the Hamidiye they would protect the frontiers of the Ottoman Empire. Some argue that the creation of the Hamidiye "further antagonized the Armenian population" and it worsened the very conflict they were created to prevent. The Hamidiye shaped

15820-523: 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

15960-445: The two stations to form a complete electrical circuit or "loop". In 1837, however, Carl August von Steinheil of Munich , Germany , found that by connecting one leg of the apparatus at each station to metal plates buried in the ground, he could eliminate one wire and use a single wire for telegraphic communication. This led to speculation that it might be possible to eliminate both wires and therefore transmit telegraph signals through

16100-568: The villages they plundered without fear of government sanction. The plunder, murder, and theft that the Hamidiye carried out went unpunished, but if a non-Hamidiye group did similar actions they were punished. Other groups who associated themselves with the Hamidiye received benefits as well, they rose in power with the money and land they acquired illegally. The Hamidiye were not held responsible for their actions. They were assured freedom of action in raids that involved non-Hamidiye parties. The Hamidiye obtained wealth illegally with secret help from

16240-459: The violence ended – some Armenian women who were tracked down following the violence indicated that they preferred to remain with their Muslim husbands, many of whom had captured them during the raids and violence, rather than return and face shame within their communities. News of the Armenian massacres in the empire were widely reported in Europe and the United States and drew strong responses from foreign governments, humanitarian organizations, and

16380-539: The violence. While Ottoman officials claimed that these conversions were voluntary modern scholars, including Selim Deringil, have argued that the conversions were either directly forced or acts of desperation. Deringil notes that many Armenian men shifted swiftly from Christianity to Islam, seeking out circumcision and becoming prominent attendees of their local mosques, attending prayer multiple times each day. Women converted as well, and many chose to remain within Islam even after

16520-488: The wall were used to give early warning of an attack. Others were built even further out as part of the protection of trade routes, especially the Silk Road . Signal fires were widely used in Europe and elsewhere for military purposes. The Roman army made frequent use of them, as did their enemies, and the remains of some of the stations still exist. Few details have been recorded of European/Mediterranean signalling systems and

16660-473: The widespread sympathy felt for Armenians in Europe. Herzl viewed the arrangement with the Abdul Hamid as temporary, and his services were in exchange for bringing about a more favorable Ottoman attitude toward Zionism . Through his contacts, he supported the publication of favorable impressions of the Ottoman Empire in European newspapers and magazines, while himself attempting (unsuccessfully) to mediate between

16800-526: The woes of the Ottoman Empire stemmed from "the endless persecutions and hostilities of the Christian world." He perceived that the Ottoman Armenians were an extension of foreign hostility, a means by which Europe could "get at our most vital places and tear out our very guts." Turkish historian and Abdul Hamid biographer Osman Nuri observed, "The mere mention of the word 'reform' irritated him [Abdul Hamid], inciting his criminal instincts." Upon hearing of

16940-463: The word semaphore . A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy. The word telegraph alone generally refers to an electrical telegraph . Wireless telegraphy is transmission of messages over radio with telegraphic codes. 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

17080-481: Was a telegraph code developed for use on the French telegraph using a five-key keyboard ( Baudot , 1874). Teleprinters generated the same code from a full alphanumeric keyboard. A feature of the Baudot code, and subsequent telegraph codes, was that, unlike Morse code, every character has a code of the same length making it more machine friendly. The Baudot code was used on the earliest ticker tape machines ( Calahan , 1867),

17220-469: Was appointed Ingénieur-Télégraphiste and charged with establishing a line of stations between Paris and Lille , a distance of 230 kilometres (140 mi). 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. A decision to replace the system with an electric telegraph

17360-414: Was demonstrated on the London and Birmingham Railway in July of the same year. In July 1839, a five-needle, five-wire system was installed to provide signalling over a record distance of 21 km on a section of the Great Western Railway between London Paddington station and West Drayton. However, in trying to get railway companies to take up his telegraph more widely for railway signalling , Cooke

17500-421: Was developed in Britain from the 1840s onward. It was used to manage railway traffic and to prevent accidents as part of the railway signalling system. On 12 June 1837 Cooke and Wheatstone were awarded a patent for an electric telegraph. This was demonstrated between Euston railway station —where Wheatstone was located—and the engine house at Camden Town—where Cooke was stationed, together with Robert Stephenson ,

17640-429: Was given the task of collecting sufficient taxes in order to recruit Kurds into the Hamidiye. If one was a member of the Hamidiye and a crime was committed against him, the government would take immediate action to punish the criminals. The plunder, murder, and theft that the Hamidiye carried out went unpunished, but if a non-Hamidiye group did similar actions they were punished. Other groups who associated themselves with

17780-540: Was invented by Claude Chappe and operated in France from 1793. The two most extensive systems were Chappe's in France, with branches into neighbouring countries, and the system of Abraham Niclas Edelcrantz in Sweden. 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

17920-522: Was invented by US Army surgeon Albert J. Myer in the 1850s who later became the first head of the Signal Corps . Wigwag was used extensively during the American Civil War where it filled a gap left by the electrical telegraph. Although the electrical telegraph had been in use for more than a decade, the network did not yet reach everywhere and portable, ruggedized equipment suitable for military use

18060-403: Was known as a telegram. A cablegram was a message sent by a submarine telegraph cable, often shortened to "cable" or "wire". The suffix -gram is derived from ancient Greek: γραμμα ( gramma ), meaning something written, i.e. telegram means something written at a distance and cablegram means something written via a cable, whereas telegraph implies the process of writing at a distance. Later,

18200-782: Was made in 1846, but it took a decade before it was fully taken out of service. The fall of Sevastopol was reported by Chappe telegraph in 1855. 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 early ideas for an electric telegraph included in 1753 using electrostatic deflections of pith balls, proposals for electrochemical bubbles in acid by Campillo in 1804 and von Sömmering in 1809. The first experimental system over

18340-542: Was made up of Armenian university students whose aim was "to create an independent Armenian state." The Hamidiye Light Cavalry was created to "combat local and cross-border challenges to Ottoman authority." The biggest patron of the Hamidiye was Abdul Hamid II . They were named after him and under the direct order of him and his brother-in-law Zeki Pasha, the Circassian commander of the 4th Army based in Erzincan . Zeki Pasha

18480-570: Was mainly used in areas where the electrical telegraph had not been established and generally used the same code. The most extensive heliograph network established was in Arizona and New Mexico during the Apache Wars . The heliograph was standard military equipment as late as World War II . Wireless telegraphy developed in the early 20th century became important for maritime use, and was a competitor to electrical telegraphy using submarine telegraph cables in international communications. Telegrams became

18620-400: Was not immediately available. Permanent or semi-permanent stations were established during the war, some of them towers of enormous height and the system was extensive enough to be described as a communications network. A heliograph is a telegraph that transmits messages by flashing sunlight with a mirror, usually using Morse code. The idea for a telegraph of this type was first proposed as

18760-524: Was not prepared for all they were intended to do because they were not trained properly and based their raids on anti-Armenian ideologies. These factors led to the slow disintegration of the Hamidiye. The Hamidiye played a significant role in the Armenian genocide and largely responsible for the Hamidian Massacres that occurred from 1894 to 1896. They were told to take control of many lands populated by Armenians to weaken "internal enemies" along with

18900-455: Was preceded by a 50-year history of ingenious but ultimately unsuccessful experiments by inventors to achieve wireless telegraphy by other means. Several wireless electrical signaling schemes based on the (sometimes erroneous) idea that electric currents could be conducted long-range through water, ground, and air were investigated for telegraphy before practical radio systems became available. The original telegraph lines used two wires between

19040-433: Was proposed by Cooke in 1842. Railway signal telegraphy did not change in essence from Cooke's initial concept for more than a century. In this system each line of railway was divided into sections or blocks of varying length. Entry to and exit from the block was to be authorised by electric telegraph and signalled by the line-side semaphore signals, so that only a single train could occupy the rails. In Cooke's original system,

19180-542: Was rejected several times in favour of the more familiar, but shorter range, steam-powered pneumatic signalling. Even when his telegraph was taken up, it was considered experimental and the company backed out of a plan to finance extending the telegraph line out to Slough . However, this led to a breakthrough for the electric telegraph, as up to this point the Great Western had insisted on exclusive use and refused Cooke permission to open public telegraph offices. Cooke extended

19320-496: 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

19460-404: Was still used, although it was accepted that poor weather ruled it out on many days of the year. France had an extensive optical telegraph system dating from Napoleonic times and was even slower to take up electrical systems. Eventually, electrostatic telegraphs were abandoned in favour of electromagnetic systems. An early experimental system ( Schilling , 1832) led to a proposal to establish

19600-473: Was used by British military in many colonial wars, including the Anglo-Zulu War (1879). At some point, a morse key was added to the apparatus to give the operator the same degree of control as in the electric telegraph. Another type of heliograph was the heliostat or heliotrope fitted with a Colomb shutter. The heliostat was essentially a surveying instrument with a fixed mirror and so could not transmit

#699300