ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF SIGNALLING Birth of Signalling.—Before coming to any account of signal ling in modern armies, we must go back a little to the invention of the electric telegraph. The first application of this invention to war was made by the British army in the Crimea in 1854, where a telegraph line was laid from Varna to the monastery of St. Georgia, from which lines were laid to Lord Raglan's head quarters and thence to established stations in the trenches. It was a curious intrusion of science and organization into a military system which was famous for neither and which was based upon the Brown Bess and the pack transport of the Peninsular War. In the Indian Mutiny three years later the scattered British forces were kept in telegraphic touch with one another and with the Government in Calcutta, and although this was an application of a civil telegraph service to military needs rather than an example of military signalling, yet it was remarkable as the first example of how the new system could be used to co-ordinate the move ments of armies, and above all to transmit vital intelligence. That the newly established telegraph service was controlled by the Government and not by the forces of mutiny was one of the deciding factors in that struggle.
The American Civil War of 1861-65 saw a great development in the use of telegraphy with the armies in the field ; and in the short and decisive Prussian campaign against Austria in 1866 a field telegraph equipment played an important part in keeping the directing brain of von Moltke in touch with the headquarters of the various armies. A few months afterwards the first British field telegraph unit was formed, entitled the Field Electric Tele graph Train, Royal Engineers. This unit is worth looking at a little closely, for it contained in itself the germ from which sprang the signal organization of the British armies which fought in the World War. It comprised two wire wagons and two office wagons; the two wire wagons each carried four miles of insulated cable on eight half-mile drums, and it is clear from this that here was a unit designed for the tactical control of troops in battle, as op posed to the long distance strategic uses of the telegraph which have been mentioned hitherto. Jointed poles were carried for raising the cable clear over roadways, but otherwise it was laid on the ground. Each office wagon formed a travelling telegraph office, and it is to be noted that in addition to the Morse recording instruments with which it was fitted, it carried visual signalling apparatus in wicker panniers suitable for pack animals, so that wire and visual communication could supplement one another.
So we come to visual signalling. In 1861 it had occurred to two British officers, Capt. Bolton of the 12th Regiment and Capt. Colomb. R.N.. that the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet could be transmitted by visual signals no less than by electric im pulses over a wire. Working together they developed what they called "the flashing system," which made use of shutters or flags by day and lamps by night to form the dots and dashes, and which stands to this day with little change save in detail. The authorities took favourable notice of the new invention in a letter dated from the War Office on March 3o, 1863. By 1865 it had been adopted
for the British navy and army, and a code for signalling between H.M. ships and troops ashore had been drawn up. The following extract from The Times of Aug. 20, 1864, is interesting : "The Lords of the Admiralty . . . proceeded on board the 'Pigmy,' where they passed nearly an hour inspecting the signal apparatus fitted on board for carrying out the experimental signalling by day and by night, between positions in mid-Channel and Portsmouth Dockyard, under the direction of Captain Frank Bolton of the 12th Regiment, and Commander Colomb of Her Majesty's Navy. Their Lordships expressed their gratification at the manner in which this effective system of joint naval and military telegraphy had been developed by the exertions of these two officers. . . ." Whether the idea travelled across the Atlantic or whether, as is likely enough, the same thought had spontaneous birth in two hemispheres, is not clear; but it is certain that the Federal army under Gen. Grant employed visual signalling in the American Civil War of 1861-65. In the British army the innovation had not long to wait for its trial on active service, and in the Abyssinian campaign of 1867-68 the loth Company of Sappers in Sir Robert Napier's force contained an officer and a number of "telegraphers" especially instructed in the new art. Its success was immediate and remarkable, and it is perhaps difficult for later generations to realize the impression which it must have made upon an army accustomed only to the traditional means of message carrying by galloper and aide-de-camp. Some of the messages transmitted give interesting glimpses into the campaigning conditions of the country and period, but here there is room to quote one only: "From Captain Pottinger to Major Murray, R.A. Bring your bat tery up to Magdala. Better come on elephants. One hundred yards extremely Steep." Later Developments up to the World War.—From the fore going it may be seen that signalling started simultaneously in the old and new world during the '6os of last century. In the years which followed it grew in diverse ways according to the soil in which it was planted, and one of its most remarkable develop ments was the use of the heliograph for long distance communica tion on the northwest frontier of India. It was perhaps inevitable that those armies with traditions of fighting over wide spaces in undeveloped lands should pay more attention to signalling than did the forces of Continental Europe. Whatever the reasons there seems little doubt that Britain with her colonial empire, and the United States with their empty and uncivilised West attached especial importance to this branch of war. In fact it was not until 1902 that the first German signalling regulations appeared. The British army profited by the experience of its Indian frontier and colonial wars, and the South African campaign at the end of the century found it equipped with highly specialized Royal Engineer telegraph units, capable equally of erecting overhead telegraph wires, or of laying field cables across country at a speed limited only by that of the six-horse teams which drew the cable wagons.