1829 braille: Difference between revisions

{{distinguishShort description|9969Louis Braille's original braille alphabet}}

| name = Braille<br><small>(first edition)</small>

[[Louis Braille]]'s original publication, ''Procedure for Writing Words, Music, and Plainsong in Dots'' (1829),<ref>[http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/braille/TheFirstPublicationoftheBrailleCode.html ''Procédé pour écrire les Paroles, la Musique, et le Plain-chant au moyen de points''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150603001222/https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/braille/thefirstpublicationofthebraillecode.html |date=2015-06-03 }}</ref> credits Barbier's [[night writing]] as being the basis for the [[braille|braille script]]. It differed in a fundamental way from modern braille: It contained nine decades (series) of characters rather than the modern five, utilizing dashes as well as dots. Braille recognized, however, that the dashes were problematic, being difficult to distinguish from the dots in practice, and those characters were abandoned in the second edition of the book.

*Decade 5 was not derived from the first. (See image at left or table below.) Like the first decade, only the top half of the cell was used.<ref>In the image, digits 9 and 0 appear shifted downward. However, the verbal description clarifies that they also occupy the top half of the cell.</ref> The digit 1 was a dash in the top row; 2 was dashes in the top and mid rows. (That is, these were ''a'' and ''b'', or modern digits ''1'' and ''2'', but with dashes in place of dots.) 3–5 were a top dash with a left, double, and right dot in the middle; 6–8 were a mid dash with a left, double, and right dot at top. 9 and 0 were ''a'' and ''b'' shifted to the right (that is, the modern French superscript and currency signs, {{braille cell|type=text|4}} and {{braille cell|type=text|45}}): [[File:Old braille, 5th decade.png|175px]]

*Decade 7 was formed with a dash in the top row of the cell, displacing the dots of the first decade downward. That is, it was much like the modern fifth decade with an overstruck dash at the top. For the 1st and 3rd characters of the decade, however, the dots were shifted all the way down to the bottom row, rather than shifted once to the middle as in the modern 5th decade;: no No character outside the original 1st and 5th decades occupied just the top half of the cell.

*Decade 8 was formed by ''splitting'' the first decade with a dash, placing it between the upper and lower parts of each sign.<ref>Braille conceived of his script as being based on a 4-dote, 2×2 square supplemented with additional dots and dashes. Thus the middle row is the lower part of the basic sign, and the bottom row is below the basic sign; thus the letter ''b'' has a dot in "each" position of the left-hand column, while the letter ''l'' has an additional dot "below" the column.</ref> That is, a dash appeared in the middle row, displacing the dots of that row to the bottom of the cell. In the case of first and 3rd characters (from ''a'' and ''c''), which haddid tonot have dots in the middle row, the dots at the top were displaced to the bottom instead. That is, this decade was equivalent to adding an overstrike to {{braille cell|type=text|3|13|36|146|16 |134 |1346 |136 |34 |346}}.

|{{Braille cell|type=text|num|k}} <br> ,

|{{Braille cell|type=text|num|q}} <br> ()

|{{Braille cell|type=text|num|r}} <br> „<!--German-style quotes in Braille's hand-->«»

|{{Braille cell|type=text|num|⠡}} <br> [[∶Colon (punctuation)|:]]

!rowspan=2 width=10px |FifthV

In the classroom, Braille's students found the characters with dashes to be impractical, as the dashes were not easily distinguishable from pairs of dots, and they were quickly abandoned. The second edition of the ''Procédé'', published in 1837, sets out [[French Braille#History|French Braille]] essentially as we know it today.<ref>Zina Weygand, 2003, ''Aveugles dans la société française, du Moyen Age au siècle de Louis Braille''</ref> According to Henri (1952), at right, the numerical sign was used with the new fifth decade, plus one of the supplementary characters, for mathematical notation: {{braille cell|type=text|num}}{{braille cell|type=text|235}} +, {{braille cell|type=text|num}}{{braille cell|type=text|36}} &minus;, {{braille cell|type=text|num}}{{braille cell|type=text|236}} ×, {{braille cell|type=text|num}}{{braille cell|type=text|256}} /, {{braille cell|type=text|num}}{{braille cell|type=text|2356}} =, {{braille cell|type=text|num}}{{braille cell|type=text|345}} [[√]]. Several of these values continue today in [[Antoine notation]].

* [http://www.nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/braille/TheFirstPublicationoftheBrailleCode.html Photographs of the pages of ''Procédé pour écrire les Paroles, la Musique, et le Plain-chant au moyen de points''], with French transcription and English translation (archived [httphttps://wwwweb.webcitationarchive.org/69o3fSsErweb/20150603001222/https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/braille/thefirstpublicationofthebraillecode.html here])