On 18 May 1767, Charles Barbier de la Serre was born in Valenciennes and
baptised Nicolas-Marie-Charles Barbier de la Serre. He died in 1841 at the age of seventy-four. He began his career as a midshipman in the artillery corps and became a pupil at the artillery school in Douai on 1 September 1784. He then served for two days in Besançon, where he was appointed Lieutenant of the Second Artillery Regiment on 15 July 1785. In 1791, he was appointed First Lieutenant and then Captain on 18 May the following year, but he was not to remain in this position for very long, as on 20 May 1792 he resigned from the army and sailed to America
In 1808, on his return to France, he published his Tableau d’Expédiographie. The following year, in Principes d’Expéditive française pour écrire aussi vite que la parole (1809), he devoted himself this time to a complete work in which he explains his system more extensively. At that point, Barbier was not introducing any highly novel concepts; neither was he fundamentally changing the field, which was already attracting attention from a number of
parties. His most striking contribution was in the last section of his explanation of his method, in which he described a way of communicating without a quill that caught the reader’s attention. Incidentally, he referred to his method by a number of different names such as: sonography, expeditious writing, nocturnal writing and many more besides.
In 1815, he published his Essai sur divers procédés d’expéditive française. Barbier’s original intent was to provide a possibility for a person who had no access to light or ink to communicate promptly and secretly, hence the importance of the terms “nocturne” and “expedititive”. Whilst this
method was not aimed at any particular category of profession, he did suggest nonetheless that it could be used by : “officiers d’une armée de campagne ou pour des voyageurs qui n’ont pas à leur disposition d’instruments d’écriture usuels”. The nocturnal writing system may well
have been, in Barbier’s view, a practical way for soldiers to conduct communications at any time, including at night, in the trenches with no need of direct access to light, only by following their perception of touch. With the added benefit of being quick to write and difficult for the enemy to decipher.
A fine example of the “réglètte Barbier”.
©Picture taken with the authorization of the Institute for Young Blind. Paris, 2023.
This second example is the most frequently used “réglètte”.
©Picture taken with the authorization of the Institute for Young Blind. Paris, 2023.
All that was required was to insert a sheet of paper between the small piece of wood and the ruler, and using the hollowed-out lines, a punch and the combinations given in his work, one could write with Barbier’s sonography.
The sophistication of the method of writing to which he aspires is far from swift and simple to learn; quite the contrary, it demands time and commitment before it can be completely mastered. An excessive number of combinations renders the whole process an impossible and impractical endeavour. On top of this, it is a phonetic system that encounters a number of limitations, requiring additional accommodation from the blind individuals
In the early 19th century, the idea of a system like Barbier’s sonography could have been a remedy for the illiteracy that was still rife. However, the people who might well have benefited from it, such as craftsmen and peasants, lacked the necessary time because they had to work and therefore had no time to devote to their studies. As for literate people, why will they waste their time learning a system for written communication when they know how to spell perfectly? It also means that the person to whom they will write needs to be aware of this system.