WEBVTT - Invention Playlist II: Braille 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:12.039 Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.680 I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. You know what, I am 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:18.280 excited today because I feel like this episode of Invention 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:21.120 is going to be something that I haven't I haven't 0:00:21.120 --> 0:00:24.000 fully dealt with yet, which is an invention that I 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.560 can't really find a bad angle on. But I feel 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:29.720 like today we're gonna be talking about an invention that 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.680 I think is just pretty great. Yeah, we're talking about Brail. 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:37.360 Brail the writing system based on tactile sensations for people 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.280 who are blind or otherwise visually impaired. So it's a 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:42.960 writing system, yeah, it's and it's It is hard to 0:00:43.000 --> 0:00:48.880 imagine Brail being used for evil, except in the sense 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:51.280 that all writing systems could be used for evil. So 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:54.560 I guess you could. Somebody could write something mean or 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:57.520 you know, outright dangerous in Brail in the same way 0:00:57.520 --> 0:01:01.920 the one could do that in any full of written communication. Yes, 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:05.280 but I would say as a modification and expansion of 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.160 an existing writing system, and of course writing comes with 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:10.800 all that writing can do, I'd say it's just a 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:13.240 good thing to have. Yeah, And they didn't start the 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:18.680 fire right there, it's a continuation of existing written language technology. 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:23.679 So whatever was already bad or dangerous in the written 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.160 word was already there, and and this is not necessarily 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:31.279 adding anything new to it in that regard. So written 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:33.959 language is something that we might not often think about 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:36.160 as an invention, but I think it's actually one of 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.920 the most important inventions to consider. Oh yeah, we've talked 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:41.800 about this a good bit on stuff to blow your 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:44.160 mind in the past. But but what he is language 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:46.920 but the power to take words and thoughts and fix 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:50.200 them in place, to record them and create complex forms 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:53.600 out of their structure. And then one can simply come along, 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.440 read the words and hear those words in your mind, 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.200 think those thoughts for yourself. So when when it's it's 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:04.240 crazy to think about this is sort of deconstructed and 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:06.440 realize that when we read the words of a long 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.280 dead thinker, we are reading we are loading their thoughts 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:13.440 into our mind and thinking with their thoughts. You're going 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:16.800 into the matrix, you're uploading their thoughts. I mean, maybe 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:19.800 not exactly, because you're probably reading across the translation gap 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:23.160 and there's something like that, but I mean reading the 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.200 words written by another person. I feel like is is 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.200 about as close as you can get to just mind, 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:31.800 you know, mind reading. Yeah. I was thinking about this 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.960 too with translation the other day, Like, you know what, 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.640 I wonder, what are what are the oldest words that 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.520 I've read that I can actually you know, get the 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:45.239 gist out of. It's not too archaic and it's a formation. Um, 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:48.160 I mean probably, I mean certainly probably something in Old 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:51.480 English passages and Bayowolf you can kind of get the 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:55.080 sense of. But those are cases where even though there's 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:57.920 you know, maybe a little distortion, uh, you know, a 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:02.120 little static from all those century is of linguistic shift, 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.839 but but you're you're still feeling those thoughts, you're still 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.239 thinking those thoughts from another time. Writing is the time 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:13.359 machine exactly. Now. While spoken languages auditory, obviously, written language 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:17.280 is a visual system, and for the blind or visually impaired, 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:21.160 written language is going to be rather lacking obviously. Yeah. Yeah, 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:26.359 just strokes on a page are going to be difficult, 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.480 if not impossible, to read. And I would say, because 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:34.600 education is so often tied up in literacy throughout much 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:36.640 of human history and lots of cultures, I think this 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:39.200 has led to a kind of unfair and dismissive under 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:41.920 consideration of the role of the education of the blind, 0:03:42.160 --> 0:03:45.200 because it's like, well, they can't read the written texts 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:47.200 we have, so what, you know, what can we really 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:51.440 teach them? Yeah, it wasn't until seventeen eighty four that 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:54.720 school for the blind was established in France and then 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:58.200 the concept spread throughout Europe. But but prior to that, 0:03:58.320 --> 0:03:59.920 I mean, certainly, if you go back to the ancient 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:04.160 world and prehistoric times you had this is sort of 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:08.920 the varying levels of of importance or or attention paid 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:13.640 to the blind or visually impaired individuals, especially individuals who 0:04:14.120 --> 0:04:18.799 who were born visually impaired or without the ability to see. 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:22.680 You go back to prehistoric civil civilizations and they might 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:27.520 have had a practice of disposing of such individuals um likewise, 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.920 throughout you know, the ancient world, you see sort of 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:35.320 varying treatment. Right, there are times where a blind individual 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:40.680 is elevated, that is celebrated. Plenty of other blind or 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:43.040 visual impaired individuals who are just simply lost to history. 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:48.120 But you know, you think about say Homer, uh the 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.400 you know, the famous Greek storyteller. Whether or not this 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:56.600 was an actual historic individual, many of the the accounts 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.840 say that that that he was blind, and so on 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:05.080 one hand, if this was an actual blind storyteller, there 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:06.679 you know there's a there's a lot to be inferred 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.800 from that. But but then at the same time, there 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:14.320 there is this tendency in human history to take individuals 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:19.400 that that are notable in some sort of disfigurement or 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:23.440 a difference in ability, or even something like twins, and 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.400 what they end up being is not not really a 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:30.360 treatment of individuals with those conditions, but symbols for other 0:05:30.400 --> 0:05:33.480 people to interpret. It's like when you look at movies 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:38.120 about twins or stories about twins, it's very often something 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:42.240 created by uh Singleton's by individuals who do not have 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.400 a twin, who are finding something in it in this 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:49.320 situation to speak to their own identity, to be a metaphor. Yeah, 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:51.560 and I think that's exactly correct. I mean, you see 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.520 characters in you brought up Homer, but I think about 0:05:54.520 --> 0:05:57.840 like the legendary character of Tyreseius, the blind prophet, which 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:01.719 I think is very often deployed by cited people as 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:04.880 sort of like a metaphor or a symbol or something 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:08.800 like that. Right, So you see this trend without going 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.080 just really deep into sort of the history of blindness 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:16.600 in human societies. But but very often the blind were 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.640 treated as metaphors as and and and they certainly lacked 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:25.760 any kind of like large scale, you know, communal experience, 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.000 Like the blind were not able to come together across 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:33.840 cultures and do things like develop their own system of 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:36.480 written language. And certainly you didn't have any real efforts 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:40.040 to make the cited world more accessible to sightless individuals. 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:42.200 You know, an individual might well be able to depend 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.240 on a family or a subordinate for aid in reading. 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:47.599 And as early as Greek and Roman times, some individuals 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.400 had access to lenses to aid them in reading. And 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:53.000 of course we'll have to come back into a future 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.960 episode of invention on that. But while the written word 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:58.680 might be tactile in some cases due to the way 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:00.920 that it's carved in stone or the way that it's 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.120 you know, created using a stylus and wax, this was 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:08.320 not the primary desired effect of those systems. Yeah, and 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:10.600 now I mean, now that we live in a modern 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.160 world where we are aware of the concept of brail, 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.480 you might not understand its history or exactly how it 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.880 was invented or how it works. Hopefully you will know 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:19.600 something about that at the end of this episode, but 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.720 you're aware of the fact that it exists before that. 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:25.200 It's it's hard to imagine that there would not be 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:29.400 some kind of widespread reading system within languages for people 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.600 who are blind or visually impaired. But throughout history that 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:36.040 just generally was the case. But we should also say 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:38.720 that Brail as it's known today was not the first 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:43.840 system of tactually encoding written language for the blind. That's right. 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.120 For instance, there was an English system created by Dr 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:51.400 William Moon, invented in eighteen forty five, moon Type, which 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:54.520 sounds wonderfully Elvin, uh, you know, like like some sort 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.640 of Elvin script that comes to life in the moonlight 0:07:57.720 --> 0:07:59.680 or something. But it was just named because that was 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:03.040 a name. But it was basically a font type that 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.200 is embossed and can be felt. And this wasn't even 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:11.480 the first such type. There was. Valentine we Uh presented 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.440 a version of this in the seventeen eighties. And again 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:19.400 the simple concept here is UH existing fonts like aes 0:08:19.480 --> 0:08:22.480 B ces ds that you can that you can trace 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.120 with your fingers, that you can touch and identify. Oh, 0:08:25.160 --> 0:08:28.120 that's an a this is a B, this is the c. Etcetera. Yeah, 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:32.400 Hui system consisted of these embossed letters, and it was 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.840 in fact somewhat useful for blind students like Louis Braille, 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.080 who we will talk about in this episode as the 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:43.160 inventor of Braille, learned to read with Hoi's system before 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:46.400 he invented Braille based on another system we'll talk about 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.240 in a bit, but it was the system of embossed letters, 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:51.199 where like a normal letter, as you're saying, would be 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.679 pressed through on a damp piece of paper and it 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:55.640 would leave a print there that you could feel with 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:59.440 your hand. But it had these real limitations, like to 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.920 hold to this size of type, the books of print 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.320 had to be huge and monstrously heavy, like I've seen 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:09.800 estimates of an average of four point five kims about 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:13.440 ten pounds per book, which is too heavy to hold 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:15.640 and carry around in a practical way, especially for a 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.320 child who's learning to read. But beyond that, there's just 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:25.000 a reality that embossed alphabetic letters are hard to read 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.160 by touch. And this is something that might not be 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:30.040 obvious to cited readers. You just like look at them 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:31.640 and say, well, they look different to me. I can 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.880 tell the difference, but reading with your fingers is a 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:39.200 different type of sensation activity than reading with your eyes is. 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:42.640 And and it just turned out that for many blind 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:45.040 students there was a lot of ambiguity in the shapes 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.200 of letters. You could be trying to read across the line. 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.679 And number one, it wasn't very fast because the letters 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:52.600 were big and you have to sort of like feel 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.080 around on each one. You couldn't just run your finger 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.960 across the line. But then beyond that, there's ambiguity between letters, 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:00.839 like a C might feel a lot like a G 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:02.760 and all that, and it would take you a minute 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:05.720 to figure out the difference. And this made reading slow 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:09.480 and laborious. I feel like there's something probably revealing in 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:11.720 this this journey thus far. You know, we've we've talked 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:16.880 about the roles or the interpretations of of of blind 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.320 and vision impaired individuals throughout history, and and here with 0:10:20.360 --> 0:10:24.400 these these systems, they do seem like a sided world 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:29.400 first technology. Absolutely, yeah, it's blind or vision impaired individuals 0:10:29.400 --> 0:10:33.640 who will make some of the the key breakthroughs here. 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:36.400 That's absolutely right. And at the same time, I don't 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:41.040 want to downplay, uh, like who's contribution, like this was 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:43.520 a real invention, this idea of the embost letters. It 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:45.880 was better than nothing. And I think it's clear that 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:48.920 who he was well meaning. Oh yeah, because it is 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.000 easy to take for granted and speaking here as a 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:54.640 sided individual, to take for granted the degree to which 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:59.040 we rely on site and and and and use that 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.520 as our key means of interpreting the world, but also 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.079 not to realize how much you're not getting about other 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:10.360 people's experiences, like if you haven't experienced it yourself. Yeah, 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:12.720 this is This is certainly an area as we continue 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.560 on in the episode, I imagine we have some listeners 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:18.959 out there who who are blind or vision impaired in 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.839 one way, shape or another. We would love to hear 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:26.320 your feedback on on Brail on the experiences we're discussing 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:28.640 in this episode totally. And one more thing I just 0:11:28.720 --> 0:11:32.280 realized about we should mention about the Hui system is uh. 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.520 I hope I'm saying his name right. It's I was 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:36.319 trying to look up how to pronounce this one. It's 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:39.079 h a u y and I could not find I 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:41.720 think it's Hui. That's my best guess. So if you're 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.360 a French speaker out there, and you're grimacing every time 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:46.199 we do this. This won't be the last time in 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:51.200 the episode encounter difficult French names. All apologies, but yeah, 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:54.800 So another thing about his system is that it's probably 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.679 also easier to use this system if you are an 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:01.200 adult who is used to reading printed letters and then 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:04.360 lost their site later on in life, and you can 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:06.840 feel around on those letters. Then if you're a child 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:09.400 who has who has never learned to read printed letters, 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.199 and you could perhaps be learning a tactle system that's 0:12:12.240 --> 0:12:14.960 much easier to pick up from the beginning. But we'll 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:16.800 come back to this, says I think we should. We 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:20.600 should move now to talk about something called night writing. 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:23.040 Are you ready for night writing? Yeah? It sounds great. 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:25.679 It sounds like like a ninet eighties horror film that 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:28.520 I could really get into, like night Gallery, Night Gallery 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:32.200 with a little like night gallery meets automatic writing meets uh, 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.600 you know, a little night cheese in there. Well, I 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:37.160 guess it also, Yeah, working on my night Cheese. I 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:39.320 just know someday we're gonna get sued because we do 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:41.760 a version of Working on My Night moves, and we're 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:44.440 not gonna We're not gonna remember that edited out better. 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.800 This is night writing. So you might have heard or 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.920 remember from history classes that the design and tactics of 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:57.000 mobile artillery were important to the success of Napoleon's military 0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:00.400 campaigns in the early nineteenth century. And Napoleon himself had 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.000 been an artillery officer when he was coming up through 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:06.920 the ranks. And another artillery officer in Napoleon's army would 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:10.360 end up playing an important role in the creation of 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:14.120 the modern Brail writing system, and this man was Nicholas 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:18.240 Marie Charles Barbier de Lasayer, often shortened to just Charles 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.480 Charles or Charles Barbier. And one good source I found 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.160 that included stuff about the life of Charles Barbier was 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.520 a book called Louis Braile A Touch of Genius by C. 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:32.680 Michael Mallore from National Braille Press in two thousand six. 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.960 So Barbier was born on May eighteen, seventeen sixty seven, 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:39.960 and he was born into an aristocratic family, not like 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:44.240 galactic scale big wigs, but like minor big wigs, medium wigs, 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.240 and he went to a military school to become an 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.240 army officer, but then the French Revolution broke out and 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.480 he being a son of a minor aristocratic family, he 0:13:54.559 --> 0:13:58.080 fled to America and worked there for several years as 0:13:58.080 --> 0:14:01.520 a surveyor, and while in the United States, supposedly Barbiea 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.839 became very interested in the writing systems that were being 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.520 used by Native American tribes to to create codes for 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:12.160 their languages, and barbie A at one point wrote, quote, 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:15.440 of all the inventions honoring the human spirit, writing has 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:19.440 contributed most to its development and progress. So this guy 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.440 is a fan of the printed word. But barbie A 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.760 later returned to France and served in the army, and 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.640 from his interest in the creation of writing systems which 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:31.160 she had sort of gained while he was in the 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.560 United States, Barbiea developed an idea for a code that 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:38.200 could be useful in wartime, and this code was called 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:43.040 night writing. Now, imagine you're outdoing maneuvers under the cover 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:46.440 of darkness. Maybe you want to put some mobile artillery 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.000 in place without the enemy noticing what you're doing in 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:51.200 the middle of the night. Now, you want to be 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.360 able to send a written message from one group or 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:58.040 station to the to another. And normally, if you send 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:00.960 a written message during night maneuvers, the person receiving the 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:03.720 message would have to light a torch or a lantern 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.240 in order to read it, but that might give away 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:08.520 your position to the enemy if you suddenly light a 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.600 fire in the middle of a dark battlefield and then 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.720 maybe some shells come raining down on you. So Barbie's 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.360 idea was to use a system of holes punched into 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:20.480 a piece of cardboard which could be read in total 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.680 darkness because you could feel the symbols of the message 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:26.400 with your fingers, allowing you to read it without a 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:29.000 light and without giving away your position to the enemy. 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.520 So Barbie has got this great idea. He's like, I'm 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.440 going to change how how night moves are done. Um, 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:37.520 he's working on his night moves and he presents this 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:40.840 this idea of night riding to the military leadership. But 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:44.520 apparently they're just not impressed. And I don't honestly know 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:46.960 the reason why they rejected his idea, But if I 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.080 had to guess, I would think one obstacle would be 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:52.760 that this code would take time and effort for people 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:56.200 to learn, and wouldn't necessarily be worth trying to make 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.840 everybody learn when you also had the option of just 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:02.080 transmitting message is by whisper in the dark. You could 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:05.040 send a human messenger to tell somebody something and they 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.280 could whisper it in their ear. That probably wouldn't give 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:11.160 much away, right, And then it also stands to reason 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.280 that in some cases you would be able to deploy 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:16.880 some sort of light and do so in a way 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:20.600 that would not necessarily give away your position. And we 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.200 wouldn't require you to have learned to call a code 0:16:23.280 --> 0:16:26.720 and utilize some sort of a punch language, maybe under 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:29.480 a blanket or something like. It's it's a it's an 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.720 eloquent solution for a problem that maybe did not call 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:36.000 for so eloquent a solution. That's possible. But even though 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.680 he got rejected owned by the way, Robert, I've included 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:41.240 a picture of Barbie a here, who, for some reason 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:43.840 just really kind of reminds me of the way Xander 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:48.400 Berkeley looks in Terminator to wait, remind me of which 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.360 character Xander Berkeley was. He's John Connor's foster dad. You 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:56.560 remember him. He's drinking the milk carton. Oh, yes, vaguely. Yes. 0:16:57.000 --> 0:16:59.640 The two one thousand gets him, Yeah, two one tho 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:02.840 gets most people in that movie. Maybe it's a spurious comparison, 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:06.280 I see it, But Anyway, Barbie was not finished with 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.720 the idea of night writing, even though it got rejected 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.600 by the military. Um. While I would say there are 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:14.720 some pretty obvious alternatives to night writing, when it comes 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:18.960 to transmitting short messages on a dark and battlefield, it 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:21.160 becomes a lot harder to come up with ways of 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:25.840 like reading longer messages, like say, entire books in the dark, 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:30.399 And so by eighteen fifteen, Barbier had developed another idea. 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.359 His idea was that the night writing system would be 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:37.280 useful to the blind, especially as written by Barbie and 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:40.760 quoted in Melore's book, quote to those born blind who 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:43.280 are deprived of the means of ever being able to 0:17:43.359 --> 0:17:46.600 read our books or our writing. And besides this meeting 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:50.840 with the greatest difficulties in correctly tracing the outlines of letters. 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:53.560 So he he knew something about this problem, like the 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.159 idea that uh blind people trying to read with with 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:02.280 embossed letters of a normal alphabetics ripped faced problems like it. 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.359 It just wasn't as easy as cited people thought it 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:08.600 should be to feel a letter with your fingers and 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.440 instantly know what it is certainly, and if you're doubtful 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:13.680 of this the next time you go to say, a cemetery, 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:16.439 or you're around some sort of you know, statue that 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:19.640 you are permitted to touch and paw at um. Try 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:21.639 it out and see how fast you can get. You 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:23.240 see if you can hit, how much you can read. 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:25.680 And it turns out Barbie was really onto something here. 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:28.400 He created what turned out to be a very important 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.240 precursor to the later system of Braille, though he is 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:34.760 not known as its inventor. That title, of course goes 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:37.959 to its namesake, Uh, the namesake of the writing system, 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:39.840 Louis Braille. So I think maybe we should take a 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:48.040 quick break and then we'll come back to meet Louis Braille. Alright, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.560 we're back, So let's talk about Louis Braille. We haveved 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:55.439 eighteen o nine through eighteen fifty two. So he was 0:18:55.720 --> 0:18:58.000 he was a frenchman. Um would later grow to be 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.400 a French educator. But as a as a child, at 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:04.879 the mere age of three, uh, he was he was blinded. 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.919 So what happened is his father was a harness maker, 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:11.240 and he'd been playing with tools in his father's shop 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.639 and a tool slipped in his hand and injured his 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:18.800 right eye. Yeah, so this was in the commune of 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.800 Kubra and his father, Like you said, it's like, I 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.840 think he made a saddles and stuff and harnesses. And 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.879 so if you're a harness maker, saddle maker, you have 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:30.960 to use a sharp tool called an owl to punch 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:34.399 holes in tough leather. And apparently young Louis was trying 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:36.120 to punch a hole in leather with the awl when 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:39.080 he accidentally slipped and he stabbed himself in the right eye. 0:19:39.600 --> 0:19:42.439 And uh, I've read that the remedy prescribed by a 0:19:42.480 --> 0:19:45.919 local healer was an infusion of something called lily water. 0:19:46.160 --> 0:19:48.080 I was looking to try to figure out what this is. 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:49.879 I couldn't find a lot of other stuff about it, 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.359 but I assume that might be I don't know, water 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.439 that has been soaked with lilies or something. But anyway, 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.400 it's possible this may have made the risk of infection 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.760 even were the stabed. I of course became infected and 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.400 then it got worse. Yeah. What resulted was something known 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:09.159 as symp sympathetic ophthalmia, which is an infection of both 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:13.800 eyes following trauma to a single eye, and this ultimately 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:17.600 resulted in total blindness. His eyes deteriorated over time and 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:20.200 he was totally blind by five. And this is particularly 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:23.040 devastating when you think about the age at which most 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.679 of us begin to acquire language, written language, you know, 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:30.000 to to be robbed of your your your visual faculties 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:34.560 at age between the ages of three and five, that's 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:38.000 that's devastating. Yeah. And of course this, uh, this led 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:42.480 to Braile's parents trying to get him enrolled in a 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.520 in an institute or or a school for blind children. 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.360 And he eventually was. Yeah, and as we mentioned earlier, 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:50.119 you know, he was he was lucky enough to have 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:53.159 been born in the right time, in the right place 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:55.840 to have access to one of these, uh, one of 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.639 the really the earliest school for the blind, and it 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.040 was at this this instant, the National Institute or the 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.080 Royal Institute for Blind Children in Paris, where I think 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:09.560 it went through some some different leadership. Um he uh. 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:13.880 He first encountered the night writing system of Charles Barbier, 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:16.879 though this, uh, this wouldn't happen until later. Barbier actually 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:20.639 approached the institute multiple times with his invention, and the 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:23.480 first time was in eighteen twenty. And so I guess 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:25.720 we should back up for a second. I don't know 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:27.600 how much you came across this, But in a lot 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:30.639 of the biographical writing about Louis Braille there tends to 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:32.800 be a kind of villain of the story by the 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:36.000 name of Sebastian Galie. Well, that's a great villain's name, 0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:38.720 I guess, so I again, That's what I'm not sure 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:40.720 I'm saying, right? Is g U I L L I 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.119 E Gali? I think? And Gilly was head of the 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:47.040 institute when Braille was first enrolled there as a child, 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:50.080 and at that time conditions at the institute were in 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:53.280 many ways just pretty awful, like the building was described 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:57.200 as damp and poorly ventilated, there was dirty drinking water 0:21:57.359 --> 0:22:01.399