16 Chapter Three
One major obstacle in the education of the blind is, of course, their in-
ability to read printed books. Valentin Haüy (1745–1822), the founder of
the Paris school, had invented a system of raised letters on paper that could
be read by touch. But this system was very difficult to use, and only a few
books had been produced using this method.
The sighted Haüy was stuck in a paradigm. To him, an A was an A was
an A, and the letter A must look (or feel) like an A. (If given a flashlight to
communicate, he might have tried drawing letters in the air as we did be-
fore we discovered it didn’t work very well.) Haüy probably didn’t realize
that a type of code quite different from the printed alphabet might be more
appropriate for sightless people.
The origins of an alternative type of code came from an unexpected
source. Charles Barbier, a captain of the French army, had by 1819 devised
a system of writing he called écriture nocturne, or “night writing.” This
system used a pattern of raised dots and dashes on heavy paper and was
intended for use by soldiers in passing notes to each other in the dark when
quiet was necessary. The soldiers were able to poke these dots and dashes
into the back of the paper using an awl-like stylus. The raised dots could then
be read with the fingers.
The problem with Barbier’s system is that it was quite complex. Rather
than using patterns of dots and dashes that corresponded to letters of the
alphabet, Barbier devised patterns that corresponded to sounds, often requir-
ing many codes for a single word. The system worked fine for short mes-
sages in the field but was distinctly inadequate for longer texts, let alone
entire books.
Louis Braille became familiar with Barbier’s system at the age of 12. He
liked the use of raised dots, not only because it proved easy to read with the
fingers but also because it was easy to write. A student in the classroom
equipped with paper and a stylus could actually take notes and read them
back. Louis Braille diligently tried to improve the system and within three
years (at the age of 15) had come up with his own, the basics of which are
still used today. For many years, the system was known only within the
school, but it gradually made its way to the rest of the world. In 1835, Louis
Braille contracted tuberculosis, which would eventually kill him shortly after
his 43rd birthday in 1852.
Today, enhanced versions of the Braille system compete with tape-
recorded books for providing the blind with access to the written word, but
Braille still remains an invaluable system and the only way to read for people
who are both blind and deaf. In recent years, Braille has become more fa-
miliar in the public arena as elevators and automatic teller machines are made
more accessible to the blind.
What we’re going to do in this chapter is dissect Braille code and see how
it works. We don’t have to actually learn Braille or memorize anything. We
just want some insight into the nature of codes.
In Braille, every symbol used in normal written language—specifically,
letters, numbers, and punctuation marks—is encoded as one or more raised
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