Émile Baudot

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Émile Baudot

Jean-Maurice-Émile Baudot , called Émile, (born September 11, 1845 in Magneux , Haute-Marne department , † March 28, 1903 in Sceaux near Paris ) was a French engineer and inventor .

Life

Born the son of a farmer, Baudot only attended elementary school. In his youth he worked on his father's farm. Until his entry into the French administration for post and telegraphy on July 16, 1870, he lived a rural life that by no means predestined him for his later inventions.

After joining the Post and Telegraph Administration, he made every effort to improve his general education in electricity and mechanics, given the scientific side of his new profession. The limited free time that his work in the Central Post Office in Paris left him with, Baudot used for scientific studies and research to improve telegraphic apparatus. After his first successes, he was promoted to controller in 1880. Encouraged by this, he decided to become an engineer. Without neglecting his actual work, as his childhood had taught him, Baudot prepared himself for the exams and successfully took them. In 1882 he was then appointed as a test inspection engineer.

In all of his research, Baudot received little support from the French Post and Telegraph Administration. Often he had to finance his research out of pocket. For example, in 1880 he sold his large gold medal, which he was awarded with at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878 .

For his achievements, Émile Baudot was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1879 . Baudot received the highest award for his work during his lifetime when he was appointed officer of the French Legion of Honor in 1898.

On March 28, 1903, Émile Baudot died after a long illness at the age of 57.

In 1926, the unit for the telegraphic walking speed was introduced in his honor and called the baud . The baud unit is the number of symbols transmitted per second.

The asteroid (14400) Baudot was named after him in 2000.

Services

The aim of Baudot's research and development was to improve the previously slow telegraphic transmission. Building on the findings of Carl Friedrich Gauß and Wilhelm Eduard Weber , Baudot first developed the Baudot code named after him in 1870 (later "International Telegraph Alphabet No. 1 (ITA1), CCITT-1").

On June 17, 1874, Baudot was granted a patent with the title "System for rapid telegraphy" under the number 103.898. Using its 5-bit code, this telegraph device was able to transmit two telegrams simultaneously via one line and to print them on the receiving end as readable text on two different strips of paper. Essentially, this device was based on printer details from David Edward Hughes ' telegraph device and a distributor invented by Bernard Meyer in 1871. Baudot combined these techniques including his own ideas, a 5-key keyboard that made his 5-bit code very easy to enter. The device produced in this way was the first to transmit signals in a system known today as synchronous time division multiplexing in order to achieve multiple use of lines.

The Baudot system was adopted by the French Post and Telegraph Administration in 1875. The first connection tests of his system took place successfully on November 12, 1877 between Paris and Bordeaux .

At the end of 1877, the Paris – Rome link (approximately 1700 kilometers) was put into operation by a double Baudot telex system.

From January 3, 1894, the Baudot telegraph operated the underground lines with a triple device from Paris to Bordeaux, which until then had only worked very unreliably with the Hughes telegraph system.

On April 27, 1894, Baudot established the connection between the Paris and Milan stock exchanges and, at the same time, between the Central Post Office in Paris and that of Milan - again via a single line .

The Baudot telex system was gradually used in France. Other countries like

  • 1887 Italy
  • 1895 Holland
  • 1896 Switzerland
  • 1897 Austria and Brazil
  • 1898 England
  • 1900 Germany
  • 1904 Russia
  • 1905 Great Britain
  • 1906 Spain
  • 1909 Belgium
  • 1912 Argentina
  • 1913 Romania

followed with the introduction of the Baudot teletype system.

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