by Andre Frouin,
Director of Electric Services
for the Paris Region
Journal Telegraphique, vol. 27, no. 4, April 25, 1903
English translation by Eric Fischer, enf@pobox.com
Mr. Emile Baudot, principal engineer of the Posts and Telegraphs of France, died March 28 at Sceaux, near Paris, at the age of fifty-seven and a half years, after a long illness.
All telegraphers know the marvelous multiple printing apparatus imagined by Mr. Baudot, so I will speak here only of the man who has just disappeared and of his work in general.
Mr. Baudot was of a modest origin. The son of farmers, he had begun his life following the career of his parents; but in 1869, he entered the Administration of Posts and Telegraphs, of which he would become the glory.
It was in August, 1874 that he received his first patent, and November 12, 1877 when the first on-line tests of his system took place between Paris and Bordeaux.
The Baudot apparatus installed at the Universal Exhibition of 1878 won our author the great gold medal and the unanimous congratulations of the engineers of the entire world. The first material form of the idea of the genial inventor, meanwhile, was not out. If the principle stayed unchanged, the character was perfected each day thanks to the master's patient work, toward the model apparatus that everyone admired at the Exposition of 1900.
During this period of twenty years, Baudot installations multiplied in France and spread in foreign countries, everywhere assuring excellent service in doubling, tripling, or quadrupling the efficiency of the wires.
At the end of 1877, the Paris-Rome line (about 1700km), a difficult operation for the Hughes, began to be served by a double Baudot. The first telegrams transmitted were those announcing the election of Mr. Carnot to the presidency of the French Republic.
Since then, the Baudot has been installed successively between Paris and Vienna, between Paris and Berne, between Paris and Berlin, between Paris and London, and between Hamburg and le Havre. In the same time, it has been adopted for interior service in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Spain, in Brasil, etc.
The International Telegraph Conference in Paris (1890) had moreover modified the regulations with the view of permitting the new apparatus to be used in international relations.
In these times, Mr. Baudot solved with his apparatus the most varied and the most interesting problems.
In July, 1887, he undertook tests crowned with success between Weston and Waterville on the cable of the "Commercial" Company; the apparatus experimented with was a double Baudot installed in duplex. The Baudot transmitters and receivers were substituted purely and simply for the recorder.
On August 8, 1890, he assured, on a single wire, discrete relations between the three towns of Paris, Vannes, and Lorient, inaugurating at this date the spread-out posts that were later so much generalized.
On April 27, 1894, he established, always over a single wire, communications between the Paris stock exchange and the Milan stock exchange, and at the same time between the central Paris and central Milan, and invented for this occasion the retransmitter.
On January 3, 1894, he served with a triple apparatus the underground wires from Paris to Bordeaux that functioned painfully with the Hughes.
Finally, the ingenious inventor Mr. Picard, inspector of the French Administration, several years ago found the solution, thanks to the flexibility of the Baudot system, to double transmission with the printing apparatus across the Mediterranean by 900 kilometer cables between Marseille and Alger.
The fertile creation of Mr. Baudot has not been the result of happy luck, but the result of stubborn work and the persistent study of a beautiful intelligence.
Mr. Baudot, in perfecting the means of exchange of thoughts, has credited humanity. His name will rest with those of Morse, Hughes, and Wheatstone who, like him, made a step in advancing civilization.