Special font

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Since the use of conventional letters and alphabets for written records is not possible or makes no sense for some special purposes, a number of special fonts have developed. Musical notes, for example, can also be represented with letters, but this type of representation for music has only established itself in the notation of the blind. Numbers can also be represented with letters, but the spelling “1999” not only has the advantage that it is considerably shorter than “nineteen hundred and ninety-nine”, it is also understood internationally. Only in Braille are the numbers expressed by letters connected with an announcement symbol for numbers. (The number 1999 e.g. through #aiii, which is not much longer than 1999).

Braille

the name Helen Keller in basic Braille

It seems natural today that Braille consists of six points. A number of six elements can be recorded immediately (see cube). For many years the dispute over the correct Braille went back and forth. The educators for the blind were of the opinion that the blind and visually impaired should not use writing that separated them from the sighted and therefore forced the use of relief writing that could also or just be read by sighted people. The Englishman William Moon (1818-1894) developed a script, the so-called Moon alphabet , which was based on the black script, but this Braille could not prevail in a free vote of those concerned. Today most commonly used Braille is by Frenchman Louis Braille developed Braille ( Braille ).

literature

  • Paul Nater: The relief script after Moon for the blind with impaired touch. Project work to establish it in Germany. ISBN 3-8253-8171-4

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Cipher

We speak of cryptography when messages are encrypted with an algorithm in order to prevent them from being accessed by third parties.

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Shorthand

Shorthand in the Bundestag

In the 1990s, the shorthand was an elementary part of commercial training and shorthand was taught in secondary schools . However, the introduction of word processing systems, including speech recognition software , has pushed shorthand to the edge. Even in parliaments, it is gradually being replaced by machine stenography. In American court broadcasts one often sees shorthand typists sitting near the judges' table and typing in the statements of those involved in the process at great speed. The advantage of modern machine stenography is that the cumbersome transfer in long letters can be omitted. There are many different shorthand systems, such as the Tironic notes of the released Roman slave Marcus Tullius Tiro and modern systems, such as the system of Isaac Pitman in England, the Irish John Robert Gregg , the Duployer system in France, the German shorthand by Franz Xaver Gabelsberger and the German unified shorthand (DEK) based on it. George Bernard Shaw wrote his plays in shorthand, and William Shakespeare's dramas would not have survived if stenographers had not secretly co-written the performances.

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telegraphy

A French general coined the term "telegraphy", which is composed of the Greek words "telos" (= fern) and "graphein" (= to write). Even in ancient times there were attempts to transmit messages over long distances using fire and smoke signals. The clergyman Monsieur Claude Chappe (1763–1805) invented the first optical telegraph in 1791 with the help of his brothers. The telegraph towers were scattered all over France on the heights. With the spread of electricity, the way was clear for the Morse alphabet, whose signals consist only of dots (short pulses), lines (long pulses) and pauses. Even if this alphabet bears the name of the painter Samuel Morse , it was his colleague Alfred Vail who had the technical knowledge to turn the idea into reality.

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Pasigraphy

Bliss man and woman symbols

The Austrian Jew Karl Kasiel Blitz ( Charles Bliss 1897–1985) in his Australian exile developed one of several writing systems that should be equally legible for all (Greek “pan” / “pasi” = all) peoples . On his escape he came into contact with the Chinese characters in the Shanghai ghetto , which were pronounced differently but understood the same across China. The trained chemist hoped to be able to quickly clear up misunderstandings and lies with a clear system of symbols. But his writing fell into oblivion until a Canadian organization for the disabled looked for easy-to-learn symbols for the spastic paralyzed. Bliss symbols are therefore used today to communicate with and between disabled people. The Koreanist Andre Eckardt created a script based on the Chinese characters, which he called Safo (= symbol). But this script is forgotten like the solresol of the French Sudre, which was based on the seven solmization syllables .

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Musical notation

Our five-line grading system is based on the teachings of Guido of Arezzo (around the year 1000). The guidonic hand was a means for the singing teacher to accurately indicate the notes . Before and long after, neumes ( Latin neuma = wink, hint) only indicated whether the melody was moving up or down. That the commonly used today notation is not the last word is ( enharmonicism , sign ...), the many reform proposals point to. There are experiments with color notation or reducing the number of lines.

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Dance script

Basic characters of the Labanotation

Dancing with a book is the name of a little book that describes the history of dance writing. This also addresses the main problem of choreography , which is largely at the level of music before the introduction of musical notation. This means that every dance has to be preceded and so memorized. In this way, however, the interpretation of the respective dancer is always adopted. This is also the reason why film recordings can not replace the notation . In addition, crucial elements can be missing from the film. Common dance notation systems are the Labanotation of the choreographer Rudolf von Laban (1928) and the systems of Conté (1931), Rudolf Benesh (1956) and Eshkol-Wachmann (1958).

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Numerals

One of the greatest inventions of mankind is the value system of the Indian numerals . It was only through them that complicated calculations became possible, which are unimaginable with the abacus or even with the Roman numerals . The decisive factor was the invention of zero , which took place independently of one another in ancient India and in the Central American Maya culture. While the Indians used a decimal system with the base ten, the Mayans used a vigesimal system based on the number twenty. The decimal place value system, which we take for granted today, was not always so obvious. How else could medieval scribes have come to I0VIIIIX for the year 1089 or ICC00 for the number 1200?

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