The South Boston hill that helped seal a glorious Revolutionary triumph is named for a glorious failure

South Boston's Telegraph Hill is wherever Washington ordered the placement of the cannons that drove the British retired of Boston successful 1776. You can't miss it - there's a monument there astatine the apical of the hill. And yet the elevation and the surrounding vicinity is named for a failed concern that hardly survived for six years earlier its proprietor gave up and moved to Philadelphia.

In its ain way, though, that concern - a strategy of relay towers that utilized semaphores and telescopes to velocity shipping quality from Martha's Vineyard decades earlier Charlestown-born Samuel Morse showed disconnected his wire-based strategy - was revolutionary. But Jonathan Grout Jr.'s "telegraphe" contiguous is mostly forgotten; his patent lost, nary markers noting what helium did. Only the sanction of the hill, and likewise named hills from Wood's Hole to Hull, remain.

All that's near of his patent is this entry:

Grout, calved successful 1761 successful Lunenburg to Sarah and Jonathan Grout - a salient assemblage person who worked with Washington connected the Siege of Boston and aboriginal served successful Congress - went to Dartmouth and became a lawyer successful Belchertown. And then, somehow, helium learned of enactment by Claude Chappe who, on with his brothers, built a strategy to velocity subject accusation crossed France successful the 1790s, utilizing a bid of relay towers staffed by men with telescopes and semaphores, which could beryllium enactment successful antithetic positions to relay numerical codes to beryllium translated by anybody with the close codification book.

With capable of these towers, France was capable to trim the clip it took to get quality from the fronts of its assorted wars to Paris from days to hours. The Chappes called their strategy a "telegraph" from the Greek words for "distant writing" - a sanction that would aboriginal beryllium utilized to sanction the bid of wires that Morse and others had built crossed continents and yet adjacent nether the seas.

At the bosom of the Chappe strategy were respective woody flags connected poles, whose positions could beryllium adjusted with cranks, corresponding to numbers. Workers astatine 1 operation would adjacent astatine a operation a fewer miles away, instrumentality down the numbers, past successful crook set their semaphores towards the adjacent strategy to relay the information. Although the velocity of each idiosyncratic fig was dilatory - it took clip to set the semaphores - the usage of codes meant sizeable accusation could beryllium sent crossed agelong distances, astatine slightest during the day, acold quicker than imaginable by equine oregon ship.

In 1 of the fewer overviews of Grout's work, successful a 1929 speech astatine the Boston Society, William Upham Swan says Grout was granted a US patent connected Oct. 24, 1800 for a akin system, which helium intended to usage to fto merchants successful Boston and Salem cognize which ships leaving Martha's Vineyard would soon travel into their ports - successful a substance of a mates of hours, alternatively than a mates of days, astatine a clip erstwhile aboriginal announcement of specified arrivals was worthy wealth to those merchants.

Two months later, the selectmen of the municipality of Boston offered him abstraction connected Fort Hill, but helium declined. Instead, helium built a bid of towers from Martha's Vineyard - past a salient shipping port, successful the days earlier the Cape Cod Canal - to Cohasset. His archetypal connection went up the seashore connected Oct. 21, 1801, announcing the accomplishment of a vessel called the Mercury from Sumatra astatine what is present Vineyard Haven.

The adjacent month, workers finished a operation for Grout atop 1 of the Dorchester Heights - from which shipping quality could past beryllium relayed to his bureau astatine 112 Orange St., what's present Washington Street, wherever today's Chinatown becomes the South End and Roxbury, a small much than 70 miles from the harbor connected Martha's Vineyard. His bureau had a wide presumption of the Dorchester Heights tower.

On Nov. 13, Swan recounts, the Boston Gazette announced:

The sloop Lucy of Boston from Baltimore and the brig Betty of Portland from Demarara person arrived astatine the Vineyard. The supra despatch accusation was communicated to this municipality done fourteen antithetic telegraphs.

A fewer days later, Grout enactment an advertisement successful different paper, offering shipping quality connected subscription astatine rates betwixt $2 and $100.

People began calling the elevation Telegraph Hill.

In 1802, Grout moved his bureau from Orange Street to 75 State St. downtown.

In 1804, the municipality of Boston annexed what is present South Boston from Dorchester, and started mapping retired caller streets - including 1 called Telegraph Street, betwixt Dorchester Street and Telegraph Hill.

But concern ne'er amounted to overmuch for the telegraphe line. Swan writes that for awhile, Swan handed implicit power to an insurer and the steadfast of a section newspaper, earlier returning to what had go a struggling business, incapable to pull capable customers. On April 24, 2007, the web carried its past message.

Grout moved to Philadelphia, wherever helium became a teacher and past a Swedenborgian. He died successful 1825.

That was not the extremity of ocular telegraphy successful Boston. In 1820, Swan continues, Samuel Topliff, already moving the thriving Merchants Exchange "news room" astatine Congress and Water streets - wherever captains of incoming ships and section merchants mixed to speech quality successful what became a forerunner of today's Associated Press - came up with his ain mentation of an optical telegraph, though 1 utilizing 3 ample achromatic balls mounted connected a mast, alternatively of the semaphores the Chappes and Grout used. In opposition to Grout, Topliff and John Rowe Parker, who took implicit the network, were capable to marque wealth from it.

But Topliff's web lone had stations connected Central Wharf - astatine the extremity of which the New England Aquarium sits contiguous - Castle Island and Long Island, to get accusation astir ships coming into Boston Harbor. The web was yet extended to Point Allerton successful Hull, Neither helium nor Parker, utilized immoderate of Grout's towers. In 1853, electrical telegraph lines reached Hull and that was the extremity of the ocular telegraph on Boston Harbor.