Raphigraphy
As decapoint or Raphigraphie (also: Raphigraphy) was later identified by Louis Braille in 1839 also developed braille called for the presentation of Latin letters.
After the Braille of Louis Braille as effective Braille slowly sat at his students and classmates, created a new problem: Braille's classmates said they now think writing letters home, but no one there could read her writing. Therefore, Louis Braille developed another braille system, with the help of which the blind pupils could write to relatives and friends who were not yet familiar with Braille.
In 1839 he published his font in the form of long columns of numbers, with the help of which the lower and upper case letters of the Latin alphabet as well as numbers and punctuation marks could only be formed from points that followed a strict grid. Its letters were ten points high and of different widths , which is why the font was given the name Decapoint in English . The numerical code enabled the blind to write Latin letters properly for the first time.
Despite the grid, these letters were difficult to write for the blind because of their ten point height. It was therefore not long before Braille's blind friend François-Pierre Foucault built the first apparatus, the raphigraph , in 1841, which could press all points of a column of characters into the paper at the same time. This gave the font the name raphigraphy.
When the first typewriters were invented, they quickly supplanted complicated raphigraphy, despite the impossibility of the blind to read their writing. As a result, it was forgotten again, but nonetheless raphigraphy (or decapoint) was the first digital font ever.
Web links
- The raphigraphy by Louis Braille from 1839, character set optically processed
- Source: Louis Braille: Brochure from 1839 ( Memento from April 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive )