The Power Of No-Vision!

The Peninsula War took place between 1807 and 1814.

It was a conflict between the Napoleon Empire and the allied armies of Portugal, Spain, and Britain to have power over the Iberian Peninsula.

Napoleon demanded a code from his generals so that the soldiers can communicate silently in dark at night.

One Charles Barbier de la Serre, a captain in Napoleon army came up with a strange piece of code which he named as ‘Ecriture Nocturne ‘ or ‘Night Writing’.

This code had the French alphabets including digraphs and trigraphs, placed in a 6*6 different squares.

The first column had one to six dots denoting the row in the square and the second had one to six dots denoting the column.

But this Barbier’s code had a problem.

It required the readers to first encode the standard spelling into a quasi-phonetic or half-phonetic rendering.

Because of the complexity, the soldiers were unable to read this system.

As a result, the military rejected the Night Writing code designed by Barbier.

In 1821, on the suggestion of French Royal Academy of Sciences, Barbier introduced this concept to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth.

The Barbier’s code got a positive response because the previous system imprinted with Latin letters was difficult to understand for blind people.

Barbier also endowed them with a system for writing the symbols on a special writing board and a pointed tool to make dots.

But the improvisation of the code does not stop here.

Louis Braille, a 13-year-old student at Royal Institution for Blind Youth, took a great interest in Barbier’s system.

He suggested Barbier to improve the code by reducing the number of dots position from 12 to 6 rows to 6 in 3 rows.

Being an army captain, Barbier felt insulted on this suggestion of the 13-year-old blind student.

He declined to make any changes.

But Louis Braille did not give up.

He had the ambition to read as easily as people who could see.

For 2 years he worked hard in improving the Barbier’s system.

Finally, he developed a system of six raised dots that can be combined in 63 ways.

The blind people found this improvised system more simple compared to Barbier’s.

They were able to read easily by running their fingertips across the dots.

The system is called as BRAILLE’S CODE and is used worldwide by blind people to read.

Braille wristwatches and Braille music were also developed using the Braille’s code.

What was rejected by the Napoleon military for being too complex was accepted by a 13-year-old who creatively improvises it, thus giving the power to blind people to read as easily as people who could see.

One man’s loss is another man’s gain!