Baudot was born in Magneux, Haute-Marne, France, the son of farmer Pierre Emile Baudot, who later became the mayor of Magneux. His only formal education was at his local primary school, after which he carried out agricultural

On 17 June 1874 Baudot patented his first printing telegraph (Patent no. 103,898 "Système de télégraphie rapide"), in which the signals were translated automatically into typographic

After the first success of his system, Baudot was promoted to Controller in 1880, and was named Inspector-Engineer in 1882.
In July 1887 he conducted

In 1874, French telegraph operator Louis Victor Mimault patented a telegraph system using five separate lines to transmit. After his patent was rejected by the Telegraph

The Telegraph Service encouraged Baudot to develop—on his own time—a system for time-multiplexing several telegraph messages using Hughes teleprinters. He realised that with most printing telegraphs of the period the line is idle for most of the time, apart from the brief

The Baudot system was accepted by the French Telegraph Administration in 1875, with the first online tests of his system occurring between Paris

Baudot married Marie Josephine Adelaide Langrognet on 15 January 1890. She died only three months later, on 9 April 1890.
Soon after starting work with the telegraph service, Baudot began to suffer physical discomfort and was frequently absent from work for this reason,