THE READING FINGERS

Jean Roblin

Chapter V: EARLY RESEARCH

NOW WE MUST GO BACK several years in order to present chronologically the succession of circumstances which enabled Louis Braille to invent his alphabet.

During the weekly meeting of the Academy of Sciences on June 28, 1819, the Secretary read to his assembled colleagues a letter from Charles Barbier de la Serre, who announced with many details the "invention of a new machine which engraves a writing of secret combinations without its being necessary to see the equipment." The placid academicians, accustomed to strange communications, were not unduly impressed, and without attaching too much importance to the new machine, chose two men to investigate, Messrs. Prony and Lacepede. In May of the following year (some time had been required to study the apparatus) the academicians at last presented their report. We shall spare the reader the entirety of the boring document, but will, however, quote the most important sentence: "This process makes communication between the deaf and the blind possible."

Charles Barbier, an artillery captain in Louis XVIII's army, had noticed the difficulties in transmitting orders during night maneuvers. With his inventive mind he solved the difficulty by combining on this cardboard dots and dashes in relief, which in combination gave orders to be carried out: "Advance!" "General withdrawal," etc. Thus, no matter how dark, the order could be rapidly deciphered merely by touch. This system was called "night writing." Charles Barbier, prompted by a zeal as sincere as it was disinterested, immediately gave thought to possible applications of his invention, and soon transformed it into writing for use by the blind, naming it Sonography.

Already Sonography showed real improvement and progress over nightwriting. Any sentence could be written, but the words were not spelled out; they were written phonetically. A great many dots for a single word, however, made deciphering long and difficult. It was at this stage of his invention, however, that Charles Barbier, toward the end of 1820, turned up on St. Victor Street and asked to see Dr. Guillié.

In his inventive enthusiasm Barbier thought perhaps that the director was going to bless his invention immediately, adopt it on the spot, and have the blind profit from it right away. The road to success, alas, is difficult and unless people have been prepared in advance for a new idea, they are not always receptive. The captain was soon to realize this.

A persuasive and stubborn advocate of his system, Barbier knew how to present clearly the advantages of his writing. The two men discussed it at length. Guillié seemed particularly worried by the complexity of the invention. "Before we do anything else," said the director, "we must experiment with it on the blind, and only daily use can determine its real value." Barbier was sure of himself. He believed that his experiments were conclusive and that liberation of the blind need no longer be delayed. He would have liked to carry away with him an official acceptance.

We know Guillié. His decisions were irrevocable. He did not deliberately wish to discourage the captain and give him a definite refusal, but his experience as director told him he should not accept a new system however attractive at first glance. Often in the course of his career he had been visited by inspired inventors whose innovations, once in the hands of the blind, proved inadequate or unusable.

On that day Charles Barbier left the Institution a little disappointed. But then, he was stubborn. His dealings with the Academy of Sciences had taught him patience. He promised himself to return.

Dr. Guillié was unable himself to try out the system. Eight days later the scandal with the schoolmistress caused him to be dismissed from the school. It was Dr. Pignier who received a Charles Barbier not at all discouraged by his first set-back. Like his predecessor Pignier stated the blind would be informed of the new system of writing. Barbier, disgusted by the continual delay and unpardonable slowness, left that day again without a favorable response.

Perhaps the reader will think it astonishing that in a biography of Louis Braille we devote so much space to Charles Barbier. Let us explain. For reasons unknown to us prejudiced writers have tried through a conspiracy of silence to eliminate this man from the invention of the system of writing in raised dots. We wish not to lessen the great value of Louis Braille's work but to render homage to the captain whose invention, imperfect though it undoubtedly was, necessarily served as a foundation for the alphabet of the blind. We frankly did not want to pass over Barbier's hard work in silence. Besides, Louis Braille himself later paid admiring tribute to this intelligent captain.

Several days after Barbier's second visit Dr. Pignier called together pupils, supervisors and teachers for a very important communication. It is hard to describe at length the curiosity which this mysterious meeting aroused in the blind. In one of the large rooms of the Institution sixty children waited, puzzled and anxious. Finally Pignier came in. He explained at length the history of the invention, described the principles of Sonography in detail, and since Barbier had left with him a few embossed pages he had them passed around among the children.

When Louis Braille felt beneath his fingers the little humps formed by the dots, his face lighted up with joy. This was what he had been looking for so many months! A writing different from that of those who could see! A writing responsive to the touch of the blind! Dots! At last something revolutionary had been created.

Supervisors, teachers and pupils were greatly interested and discussed it in small groups. They questioned Pignier. They tried to read the words. They exclaimed over it and gave their opinions. Some thought that it was rather complicated, but everyone agreed that the system must be adopted.

Thus it was that the following week Barbier learned in a letter from the director that his Sonography would be used at the Institution as an "auxiliary method of teaching."

Sonography soon held no secrets for Braille. When the busy life at the Institution left them some leisure, he and his friend Gauthier practiced writing sentences and gave them to each other to read. (Embossed writing was made possible by an ingenious device consisting of a sliding rule guided by the two edges of a board. The rule, pierced by little windows, permitted a blind person to trace the dots with precision by the aid of a stylus which embossed a heavy paper placed between the ruler and the board.)

But as Louis's ability became progressively greater, he discovered serious flaws in the system. Basically it was only an ingenious shorthand. No attention was paid to conventional spelling since the dots represented sounds only. There was no provision for punctuation, accents, numbers, mathematical symbols or music notation. And finally, the chief argument; the complexity of the combinations made reading very difficult. In spite of that Louis made improvements in the system. Very interesting changes for the better, moreover, which were conveyed by Pignier to the inventor. As soon as Barbier learned that a pupil of the Institution had solved problems for whose answer he had long been searching, he hastened to the school to meet this ingenious boy.

It is easy to understand the astonishment of the old captain (Barbier was then fifty-five), when he was introduced to a thin, pale youngster with blond hair. His surprise grew greater still when Louis began to speak very politely in carefully chosen language. He spoke of the drawbacks of Sonography for the blind and the improvements he was planning to introduce. Before the precociousness of the boy the captain felt a little ill at ease. This little boy in knickers was going to dare to change his system! That would be amusing, indeed! And Charles Barbier, while acknowledging the value of the improvements suggested by Louis Braille, defended the main principles of his invention so vigorously that Louis became intimidated and did not know what to say and gave up.

Then began the truly creative work of Louis Braille. Henceforth he was going to concentrate completely on a new method, of whose general outline he could as yet have only an inkling, but which was to solve all the problems raised by the Barbier writing system.

It was at night, especially, that the boy worked. When the breathing of his comrades had grown regular in the great dormitory of the Institution, he would take out his board and stylus and devote himself eagerly to calculations and experiments. Nights of work made up of perseverance and will-power. The boy knew that some day from all this would come light. Sometimes Louis Braille would doze off from exhaustion, his nose on his board, the stylus in his hand, as though he wanted to keep on working in his sleep. At other times, stimulated by the desire to hit upon a solution and working feverishly with no idea of time, he would suddenly grow conscious of daybreak from the jolting of the first wagons on the street pavement. Vacation time came. Nights without sleep at the Institution had weakened Louis. The peacefulness of the country gave him new strength. He would sit on the edge of a slope and spend whole hours experimenting and patiently constructing his alphabet. Passers-by would draw near, curious. What a strange pastime for a child to make holes in paper with a stylus. The villagers used to say, "There is Louis making his pin-pricks!"

At last, with the reopening of school in October his invention was ready. By means of two rows of three dots arranged vertically, combined sometimes with small horizontal dashes, and by varying the number and the position of these dots and dashes, Louis had succeeded in obtaining sixty-three combinations representing all the letters in the alphabet, the accents, punctuation marks and mathematical signs.

The child prodigy was fifteen years old!

Soon the entire Institution knew all about the new method. Gauthier, who had shared in the first experiments, eagerly announced the creation of the alphabet to his comrades in a burst of admiration and friendship for Louis. Pignier, who had heard of it, summoned the boy. Seated in a large arm-chair opposite the director's desk, Louis repeated the astonishing demonstration once again on his board. Pignier could not believe his eyes. The simplicity and rapidity of execution were truly admirable. He embraced the boy with suppressed emotion and deep inner joy. Louis thought his work was not yet finished, that several problems of detail remained to be solved; but the fatherly encouragement of the director strengthened his resolve and gave him new courage. He left happy and determined to devote himself still further to his creative task.

The pupils quickly adopted the system, and Pignier responded to their enthusiastic wishes by having Barbier's sliding rulers converted. Thus new possibilities opened up to the blind children. Henceforth they were able to take notes in their classes, do their spelling and literary composition lessons and copy useful books and passages dictated to them; they could correspond either among themselves or with the seeing (provided that the latter had previously been initiated into their methods); they were able to gather together their feelings, thoughts and impressions, and made paper the repository of the secrets of their souls.

The boy did not neglect his studies in favor of research. Manual and intellectual work filled his days. "Each year," Coltat tells us, "the name of Louis Braille rang out among the winners of the various prizes." History, rhetoric, philosophy, algebra—he assimilated everything with astonishing ability. We do not claim he was a genius, but his remarkable qualities and his exceptional intelligence must be acknowledged. In 1823, at fourteen, he was foreman of the workshop which made slippers. In 1826, when he was still a student, he began to teach algebra, grammar and geography. Between classes he continued to acquire knowledge. He attended courses at the Collège de France, studied the organ, and gave piano lessons to the young pupils at the Institution. In 1827 his alphabet made possible the transcription of parts of the Grammar of Grammars. In 1828, continuing his research, he applied his system to musical notation. He succeeded in writing notes in seven different octaves "simply by having the notes preceded by a symbol assigned to each octave." The same year he envisaged doing away with the dashes in his alphabet. (The dash is easily identifiable to the touch, but very difficult to engrave with the stylus.)

In 1829, after the transcription of the grammar there appeared the first edition of the Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them.

It is in the preface of this book that Braille says in speaking of Barbier, "If we have pointed out the advantages of our method over his, we must say in his honor that his method gave us the first idea of our own."

This tribute paid to Barbier is touching proof of Louis Braille's modesty. Stupid vanity was foreign to him. He had no desire to reap glory from his alphabet. He was happy simply to improve the lot of his comrades. Furthermore, he did not care to be the center of attention. He preferred to live unobtrusively. As the child had been obliging and good, so the young man revealed himself pure in heart and in life. He wanted only to be the humble servant of his brothers. The spirit of this blind man teaches us many lessons in humbleness.