Night writing
Night writing was a system of code that used symbols of twelve dots (2 wide and 6 high) designed by Charles Barbier in response to
Napoleon's demand for a code that soldiers
could use to communicate silently and without light at night. Called sonography, each grid of dots stands for a letter or
phoneme. Barbier's system was too complex for soldiers to learn, and was rejected by the military; in 1821 he visited the
National Institute for the Blind in Paris, France, where he met Louis
Braille. Louis identified the major failing of the code, which was that the human finger could not encompass the whole symbol
without moving, and so could not move rapidly from one symbol to another. His modification was to use a 6 dot cell — the
Braille system — which revolutionized written communication for the blind.
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