In 1798, the marine engineer Laval and the person in charge of the port of Le Havre, Peytes-Moncabrié, proposed the “Vigigraphe” (which would mean “watchman who writes down his observations”) to send messages from land to ships. The Vigigraphe was difficult to implement. operate and was replaced by a design by Charles Depillon (or Dupillon) (1768-1805) and put into practice by the ship captain Luis Leon Jacob calling it “semaphore”. Etymologically the word semaphore means “signal bearer” (from the Greek sema = sign and phoros = “that bears”).