https://loeffelholz-codex.org/en/codex/f076r.html
Reading this in between studying information theory makes a good laugh. This is the most inefficient code I've ever heard of. It's basically unary.
(For background, the first popular optical telegraph wasn't created until ~300 years later, and used 98 visually-distinct coding symbols).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappe_telegraph#Coding_and_de...