This forms a unique history, which few telecom operators can claim today. Until the end of the eighteenth century, information could only travel as fast as a messenger on horseback. In , Claude Chappe invented a faster communication system through optical telegraphy: a line of stations that could relay coded messages via visual signals.
Nineteen years later, Guglielmo Marconi sent the first radio message. In the meantime, however, in , Alexander Graham Bell pulled off a revolution within the revolution, by converting sound waves into an electric current: the telephone was born. The history of the telephone in France began in with the first subscribers and publication of the first directories.
A new milestone in France was reached in : two subscribers talked through an automatic telephone exchange for the first time in Nice without any operator assistance, marking the beginning of the end for switchboard operators and broadening access to automated telephone communications.
First submarine and telephone cable between France and England. Submarine telephone cables have played a key role in the telecoms revolution since they first linked France to England in and France to the United States in The arrival of optical fiber in with the TAT 8 increased the capacity to 40, simultaneous communications. In , the network performance was so good it enabled a remote surgical operation to take place between a surgeon in New York and patient in Strasbourg.
With its heritage dating back to the nineteenth century, Orange is one of the few operators who has laid cables since the start. Of our fleet of seven vessels i. Six years later, it was converted into a public limited company with the government as the sole shareholder.
