The first recorded use of the heliograph was in 405 BC, when the Ancient Greeks used polished shields to signal in battle. In about 35 AD, the Roman emperor Tiberius, by then very unpopular, ruled his vast empire from a villa on the Isle of Capri. It is thought that he sent coded orders daily by heliograph to the mainland, eight miles away. The first to think of mounting mirror systems onto airships is not recorded, but the refinements made by Baron Klaus Wulfenbach have brought heliography to a new level of accomplishment and efficiency.