Positive Images Certainly propaganda needs positive aspects as well: The art of circulating positive images even if the actual situation is unsuccessful, like in a war or before elections, when all opinion-polls are negative, is one which needs talent. Napoleon obviously possessed this talent. Another master of this was Adolf Hitler and the people working next to him. The way how he was portrayed as the father of the nation, the sensitive guide through that war - even at a moment when it should have been clear that there was nothing left to win for the Germans/Austrians in that war - is quite extraordinary and demonstrates a hard piece of work. But more than anything else it need the population's will to believe those propaganda-messages. And the Germans preferred to believe in Hitler than to look for another truth.

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Chappe's fixed optical network Claude Chappe built a fixed optical network between Paris and Lille. Covering a distance of about 240kms, it consisted of fifteen towers with semaphores. Because this communication system was destined to practical military use, the transmitted messages were encoded. The messages were kept such secretly, even those who transmit them from tower to tower did not capture their meaning, they just transmitted codes they did not understand. Depending on weather conditions, messages could be sent at a speed of 2880 kms/hr at best. Forerunners of Chappe's optical network are the Roman smoke signals network and Aeneas Tacitus' optical communication system. For more information on early communication networks see Gerard J. Holzmann and Bjoern Pehrson, The Early History of Data Networks.

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