Louis Braille and the Night Writer
Louis Braille’s tactile reading system made literacy for the blind a reality, but he was indebted to an officer in Napoleon’s army.
As a boy in military school, Charles Barbier de La Serre (1767-1841) was taught that war was a noble profession in which victories are won by intelligence and valour. As a man, he would come to learn how savage the war could be.
Barbier served as an artillery officer in his one-time classmate Napoléon Bonaparte’s army. Stationed on the front line, he witnessed firsthand war’s capacity to kill and maim. Besides those who were slain on the battlefield by day, many soldiers – including his fellow officers – were killed in the dead of night when the light they used to read maps or orders fatally illuminated them for waiting enemy snipers.
Yet years earlier, Barbier had attended a lecture on the Greek historian Polybius and the system – known as the Polybius’ Square – of transmitting messages across great distances with the aid of torches.
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