The pioneers of interplanetary communication: From Gauss to Tesla

The present overview covers the period from 1820 to the beginning of the 20th century. Emphasis is laid on the latter half of the 19th century because many efforts have been done at that time to elaborate schemes for contacting our neighboring planets by interplanetary telegraphy. This period knew many advances not only in planetary studies but also in the nascent field of telecommunications. Such a context led astronomers who were also interested in the problem of planetary habitability, to envisage that other planets could be contacted, especially the planet Mars.Interplanetary communication using a celestial telegraphy was planned during this period of great speculations about life on Mars. This paper focuses on four authors: the Frenchmen C. Flammarion, Ch. Cros, A. Mercier and the Serbian N. Tesla, who formulated early proposals to communicate with Mars or Venus. The first proposals (which remained only theoretical) showed that an initial reflection had started as early as the second part of the 19th century on the type of language that could be both universal and distinguishable from a natural signal.Literary history of interplanetary communication preceded by far the scientific one. Authors of the 1900s were very prolific on this topic. French fictions are mentioned in this paper as examples of such a literature. This incursion into selected texts stresses the fact that the problem of techniques and messages employed to communicate with other planets goes beyond the strict scientific framework.Finally, this paper aims to highlight the similarities as well as the differences between the different proposals and to underline what that could possibly help present SETI research to define messages supposed to be sent to other planetary systems.