Francesco Lana de Terzi (1631-1687) – Italian Jesuis priest, mathematician, naturalist and aeronautics pioneer.
In 1803, the literary, music and theatre critic Charles-Pierre Coste d’Arnobat published his Essai sur de prétendues découvertes nouvelles dont la plupart sont âgées de plusieurs siècles, in which chapter II of
Francesco Lana de Terzi’s work appears, Prodromo overo saggio di alcune invenzioni nuove, printed in Brescia in 1670, in which he presents a completely revised form of writing for the blind. Lana de Terzi entitled his chapter : “De quelle manière un aveugle né peut, non seulement apprendre à écrire, mais encore à cacher ses secrets sous un chiffre, et à entendre la
réponse sous le même chiffre”. Unlike previous methods, what Barbier and Francesco Lana de Terzi have achieved is the ability for blind people not only to write but also to have the possibility of proofreading their writing. Father Lana offers blind people the chance to communicate with each other without confining them to a circle reserved exclusively for the blind, because his process “peut-être utile, non seulement aux aveugles mais aux clairvoyants qui veulent avoir avec eux une correspondance secrète”. Father Lana’s system works as followed:
© Picture taken with the right given by the Institut for the Young Blind, Paris. 2023.
© Picture taken with the right given by the Institut for the Young Blind, Paris. 2023.
He suggested that the plate shown above should be engraved in
large type or sculpted so that only the characters and lines stand out. In this respect, the writing process invented by Terzi significantly outperforms that of Barbier’s sonography. It is considerably simpler to operate and can be absorbed into memory very quickly