[DrPhish]

Wouldn’t you also need to include the Ancient Greek phryctoriae military fire signalling system by that logic? It probably wasn’t the first, at that.

[littlestymaar]

It depends, how versatile was the Greek signaling system?

AFAIK the Télégraphe Chappe was the first general purpose telegraph able to send arbitrary messages, and was used by both the administration (for civilian as well as military purpose) and the private sector for business.