The Extraordinary Escargotism of the Pasilalinic Phoney

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n Mankind had long puzzled how to transmit messages atnlong distances as quickly as possible. From antiquity, various solutions hadnbeen tried – fire beacons, smoke signals, flashing mirrors and so on, but innthe snappily titled A century of the names and scantlingsnof such inventions as at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfectednwhich (my former notes being lost) I have, at the instance of a powerfulnfriend, endeavored now, in the year 1655, to set these down in such a way, asnmay sufficiently instruct me to put any of them to practice, (written inn1655 but not published until 1663), Edward Somerset, 2nd Marquess ofnWorcester, put forward the idea of,

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n“How at a window, far as eye can discover blacknfrom white, a man may hold discourse with his correspondent, without noise madenor notice taken; being, according to occasion given and means afforded, ex rennata, and no need of provision beforehand; though much better if foreseen, andnmeans prepared for it, and a premeditated course taken by mutual consent ofnparties.”

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Worcester – Century of Inventions – 1663

nRobert Hooke, took up the idea in 1684, as a aid tonthe military following the Battle of Vienna in the previous year, but the plansncame to naught. The notion was revived by the Frenchman Claude Chappe who, withnhis four brothers, built a series of 556 signalling towers, covering 3,000nmiles, across the French landscape, from 1792 onwards. The towers used a systemnof semaphore posts, which could be changed to various configurations thatnrepresented letters or code words. A central post – the ‘regulator’ – had twonshorter beams at its end, and could be aligned vertically or horizontally,ngiving a total of 196 possible configurations. It was a marvellous inventionn(and has been dubbed the ‘mechanical internet’), but had one drawback – it couldnnot be used in bad weather or at night.

Various types of Semaphore Telegraphs

nAttempts were made in the early 1800snto utilize the new advances in electrology, with the electric telegraph beingndeveloped in the 1830s by Wheatstone and Morse. Eventually, the telegraphnsuperseded the optical towers of the Chappes, and the prospect of globalncommunication was seriously considered but the early attempts to lay cablesnunder the English Channel in 1850 failed when they repeatedly broke. Thenprobability of transatlantic cabling seemed doomed before it began. Heads werenscratched and beards stroked perplexedly, until two gentlemen of Gallicnorigins, a Monsieur Jacques Toussaint Benoît and his colleague, a mysteriousnand quite possibly fictious, Monsieur Biat-Chrétien (who, apparently, residednin America although no one ever saw him), proposed a system that utilisedngalvanism together with terrestrial and animal magnetism. And, being French,ntheir system was, of course, based on snails.

La Presse – October 27 1850

nThis remarkable discovery wasnannounced to the world in the prestigious Parisian newspaper La Pressenof October 27^th 1850, by M Jules Allix who, in an almostnstereotypically Gallic piece of rambling rhodomontadic journalism, eventuallyngets around to explaining the principles thus,

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n“… it seems that snails whichnhave once been put in contact, are always in sympathetic communication. Whennseparated, there disengages itself from them a species of fluid of which thenearth is the conductor, which develops and unrolls, so to speak, like thenalmost invisible thread of the spider, or that of the silk worm, which can benuncoiled and prolonged almost indefinitely in space without its breaking, butnwith this vital difference that the thread of the escargotic fluid is invisiblenas completely and the pulsation along it is as rapid as the electric fluid.”n

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nThis galvano-terrestrial-magnetic-animal and adamicnforce exploits the same principle as Sir Kenelm Digby’s Sympathetic Powder,nthat two things, be they snails or people or weapons, form a contact thatnremains in place even when they are later separated and which operatesnregardless of the distance between them. M Benoît proposed that after twonsnails had been in contact, an invisible escargotic fluid came into being andnif the snails were separated, let’s say one left in Paris and the other takennto New York, that fluid connected them through the earth, so if a person werento touch the Parisian snail, the New York snail would react.

Snails …

nAn apparatus wasnbuilt – a square box containing a Voltaic pile, with a central steel axisnaround which the plates were arranged, with small zinc cups attached to each.nThe cups were lined with cloth soaked in copper sulphate solution and held innplace by a copper strip, and into which a snail was glued. Each galvanic cupnrested on a delicate spring, arranged so it responded to ‘every escargoticncommotion’, and was marked by a letter of the alphabet, by which messagesncould be spelled out. This marvellous device went by the name of the Pasilalinic-SympatheticnCompass.

… and a conventional Telegram

n M Benoît made the acquaintance of a M Triat, the founder andnmanager of a Parisian gymnasium, of whom was, it was said, he possessed commonnsense but little education. Carried away by the enthusiasm of Benoît, Triatnprovided the inventor with premises, materials and a hired help, and Benoît setnabout building his apparatus. At first he had told Triat that all he needed wasntwo or three bits of wood but then it became apparent that a few more bits ofnwood were required, and then some other bits and pieces too, the cost of whichncame from the pocket of M Triat.

nAfter twelve months, he began to get a littlenanxious and threatened to withhold further funding but Benoît, who had spentnmost of the time and money on other projects, pronounced the Pasilalinic-SympatheticnCompasses were now complete. Ideally, they should have been in differentnrooms but space was limited, so he had built the pair in the small apartmentnthat was available to him, and the two or three bits of wood had grown into twonten-foot tall scaffolds, from each of which was suspended the massive voltaicnpiles. Benoît assured Triat that he was in daily correspondence with hisnassociate, M Biat-Chrétien, over in America, via his snail mail, but advisedncaution, as if word was to get out about this miracle before it was fullynperfected, competitors might steal the idea from under them. This line ofnreasoning fell onto M Triat’s deaf ears, who insisted on a practicalndemonstration and on October 2^nd, in the company of thenafore-mentioned reporter M Allix, Benoît proceeded to perturb his gastropods.

M Jules Allix

nOn one scaffold stood Allix, who was told to spell out a word by touching thenappropriate letters; Benoît stood on the other scaffold awaiting the message,nbut found it necessary, for a variety of technical reasons, to shuttle betweennthe two Pasilalinic-Sympathetic Compasses, before declaring the word ‘gymoate’nhad been sent. It was close. The actual word sent had been ‘gymnase’,nsaid Allix. He changed places with Triat, who sent the words ‘lumiere divine’,nwhich the still-shuttling Benoît and his orthologically-challenged molluscsnrendered as ‘lumhere divine.’ He was then told to get in touch with hisntransatlantic counterpart, so he sent the Alert signal and then touched each ofnthe snails corresponding to the letters of the word BIAT in turn, with an‘sympathetic’ snail held in his hand. After a short delay, the horns of certainnmiserable, glued-down snails crept out of their shells before darting back in,non contact with the copper sulphate. With a little judicious punctuation, thenletters received were, Benoît revealed, ‘c’est bien.’ Allix wasndelighted, impressed and excited. Triat was disgusted, unimpressed andnunderwhelmed. Allix went off and wrote his piece of prolix prose. Triat wentnaway and sulked.

Unsympathetic Snails

nThen he came back and let fly at Benoît. He was pulling thenplug, he fumed, he had been swindled and made a fool of. Enough was too much.nBenoît was contrite. He could, he said apologetically, give Triat thendemonstration he wanted. He would relocate the Pasilalinic-SympatheticnCompasses to M Triat’s gymnasium, one in one room and one in another, andnremain firmly in whatever room Monsieur designated. Triat was mollified to thenextent that he offered Benoît one thousand francs a day for his researches ifnonly he could see the snail telegraph work convincingly. He contacted anothernjournalist from La Presse, M de Girardin, who arranged to be present atnthe demonstration, also offered a further thousand francs a day if he wasnsuitably impressed and laid out plans from further public demonstrations at thenJardin d’hiver, to a paying audience. Everything was arranged, and thenday before the appointed day, Monsieur Jacques Toussaint Benoît disappeared. And that was that. Gone. Into the night. Not known at this address.

nHe was rumoured to havenbeen seen wandering around and about Paris from time to time, hollow-eyed and muttering to himself, and is said to have died, quite mad, in 1852.

Another Snail

nThe plans for the snail telegraph were shelved, never to be seen again, and thenwhole fiasco became a world-wide laughing stock – Sir Richard Francis Burtonnrefers to it in his Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madhina andnMeccah –