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There were optical telegraphs before electrical: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telegraph

"The Early History of Data Networks" is a good read on the topic: https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Early_History_of_Da...

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That's a mind blower, I did not know about it thank you.

The coding for the optical telegraphs seemed primitive to me. I wonder if you couldn't come up with a system that mixed signals going both ways.

The semaphore tower method could maybe have supported mixed signals with one operator dedicated to receive/forward and the other operator dedicated to acknowledge with a detailed response.

A series of "glyphs" that mixed forward signals and backward signals would help. Old school "local loop" telephones electrically multiplexed signals, but the optical telegraphs were quite a bit more discrete.

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