I cannot give any Lists of Marks or Answers to Correspondents this week, so will take this opportunity for describing my recent invention for writing in the dark, which arose from the need of recording Syzygy-Chains invented when lying awake at night, but which will, I hope, serve a far more important purpose, by enabling blind people to write letters, &c., without having to dictate them to others.
I think of calling the mechanical appliance which my system requires, in addition to an ordinary “indelible” memorandum-book, the “Nyctograph.” I invented it September 24th, 1891, but I do not intend to patent it. Any one who chooses is welcome to make and sell the article.
Any one who has tried, as I have often done, the process of getting out of bed at 2 a. m. in a winter night, lighting a candle, and recording some happy thought which would probably be otherwise forgotten, will agree with me that it entails much discomfort. All I have now to do, if I wake and think of something I wish to record, is to draw from under the pillow a small memorandum book, containing my Nyctograph, write a few lines, or even a few pages, without even putting the hands outside the bed-clothes, replace the book, and go to sleep again.
There is an ingenious machine already made and sold (I bought mine from Messrs. Elliott, 101, St. Martin’s Lane), where you write a line of MS. inside a narrow oblong opening, then turn a handle till you hear a click; this shifts the paper upwards and gives a fresh surface for another line of MS. I tried to put this into a more portable shape, by cutting a series of oblong apertures in a piece of pasteboard the size of a page of a small memorandum book; but the writing is apt to be illegible, as it is difficult to know where you are, and you constantly come against the edge of the aperture when you wish to go further in order to make the loop of an “h” or the tail of a “y.” Then I tried rows of square holes, each to hold one letter (quarter of an inch square I found a very convenient size), and this proved a much better plan than the former; but the letters were still apt to be illegible. Then I said to myself “Why not invent a square alphabet, using only dots at the corners, and lines along the sides?” I soon found that, to make the writing easy to read, it was necessary to know where each square began. This I secured by the rule that every square-letter should contain a large black dot in the N. W. corner. Also I found that it would cause confusion to have any symbol which used only the W. side of the square. These limitations reduced the number of available symbols to 31, of which I selected 26 for the letters of the alphabet, and succeeded in getting 23 of them to have a distinct resemblance to the letters they were to represent.
Think of the number of lonely hours a blind man often spends doing nothing, when he would gladly record his thoughts, and you will realise what a blessing you can confer on him by giving him a small “indelible” memorandum-book, with a piece of paste-board containing rows of square holes, and teaching him the square-alphabet. The crowning blessing would be that, instead of having to dictate letters to his attendant, he could write them himself, and no one need see them except those to whom they were written. In the following list, I call the N. E. corner “2,”, the S. W. corner “3” and the S. E. corner “4.” Also I have bracketed letters whose symbols run in pairs, each being the reverse of the other. Every symbol is assumed to have a large dot in its N. W. corner.
| Corners | Sides | Resemblance to letters, &c. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 4 | none | right-hand side of “A” | |
| B | 2, 4 | W | vertical line of “B,” with dots to stand for the semicircles. | |
| { | C | none | N, W, S | obvious |
| D | ” | N, E, S | obvious; also reversal of preceding symbol | |
| E | ” | N | top of “E”; taken as simplest symbol for commonest letter | |
| { | F | 4 | N, W | obvious; dot stands for cross-piece which has fallen off |
| G | 2 | W, S | analogous to symbol for “C”; also reverse of preceding symbol | |
| H | none | W, E | obvious | |
| I | ” | S | like “i,” vertical line having fallen down | |
| J | ” | E, S | like “j,” dot having slipped to one side | |
| K | 4 | W | vertical line, and foot, of “K” | |
| L | none | W, S | obvious | |
| { | M | ” | N, W, E | like “m,” with centre vertical erased |
| N | ” | W, E, S | reverse of preceding symbol | |
| O | ” | N, W, E, S | obvious | |
| { | P | 2 | W | vertical line of “p,” with dot to stand for semicircle |
| Q | none | E | vertical line of “q,” with dot to stand for semicircle; also reverse of preceding symbol | |
| R | 3 | N, E | lower part of “R” | |
| { | S | none | N, W | like old-fashioned “S” |
| T | ” | N, E | left-hand part of “T”; also reverse of preceding symbol | |
| U | 2 | none | tops of “U” | |
| V | 2, 4 | ” | corners of “V” | |
| W | 2 | S | like two “V” symbols, with lower corners connected by a line | |
| { | X | 3 | N | no likeness claimed |
| Y | 4 | N | ditto, but is reverse of preceding symbol | |
| Z | none | N, S | upper and lower lines of “Z” | |
| “figures” | 2, 3 | none | corners of “F”; means “symbols will now represent figures” | |
| “date” | 2, 3, 4 | ” | corners of a square “D”; means “next 6 symbols will represent date, 2 standing for day of month, 2 for month, and 2 for year of century” (e. g., “070305”) | |
| “letters” | 3, 4 | ” | corners of “L”; means “symbols will now represent letters again” | |
| “and” | 3 | E | symbol for A put upright; and right-hand portions of symbols for “N” and “D” | |
| “the” | 3, 4 | N | upper portion of symbol for “T”; feet of symbol for “H,” and symbol for “E” |
When the symbols are to represent figures, they should be the symbols for 10 of the letters, as follows:—
| Number | Letters | Reasons for Selection |
| 1 | B | first consonant |
| 2 | D | initial of “duo” and “deux” |
| 3 | T | initial of “three” |
| 4 | F | initial of “four” |
| 5 | L | means “50” [in Roman numerals] |
| 6 | S | initial of “six” |
| 7 | M | final of “septem” |
| 8 | H | initial of “huit” [French for “eight”] also resembles “8” |
| 9 | N | initial of “nine” |
| 0 | Z | initial of “zero” |
These 10 letters are a portion of my “Memoria Technica,” in which (by assigning 2 consonants to each digit, and assigning no meaning to vowels and “Y”) I can always represent any date, or other number, by a real word: the other 10 consonants being as follows:—“1, C; 2, W; 3, J; 4, Q; 5, V; 6, X; 7, P; 8, K; 9, G; 0, R.” There are reasons for selection in all these pairs, except “3, J,” which had to pair off as the sole survivors.