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How Braille Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com? So, Chuck, it's really
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Speaker 1: hot here. Yes, we are still in Guatemala here on Thursday.
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Speaker 1: Although we recorded this we bypass the spacetime continue them
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Speaker 1: to fool you all. Then it's actually quite comfortable here
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Speaker 1: in the studio. It is. It's lovely and hopefully neither
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Speaker 1: one of us have died from typhoid at this point
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Speaker 1: or been taken hostage. We take out to tell you
0:34
Speaker 1: I'm worried about, right, and hopefully what's happening is you
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Speaker 1: guys are reading about this on our blog at how
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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com Stuff you Should Know blog. Depending
0:42
Speaker 1: on our internet we are uploading daily post about our
0:45
Speaker 1: experience here. Either that or if what Chuck just said
0:48
Speaker 1: proved false, that means that we have spotty internet down
0:51
Speaker 1: in Guatemala and all of them will be uploaded the
0:53
Speaker 1: following week after we get back. Right, that's it, okay,
0:56
Speaker 1: So look for those live now on the blogs that
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Speaker 1: how stuff We're dot com or the week beginning the fifteen. Hey,
1:17
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me is
1:20
Speaker 1: always a Charles W. Bryant, and guest producer Matt Frederick. Yeah,
1:25
Speaker 1: Matt is filling in for Jerry, who's sick right now
1:28
Speaker 1: because she's got the hepatitis. She doesn't really I got
1:32
Speaker 1: the hepatitis. Now you don't. What do you think they
1:34
Speaker 1: injected us with? Uh? Folks, we got hepatitis shots by
1:37
Speaker 1: the way, because we are traveling to Central America, Guatemala,
1:41
Speaker 1: and they said that that's a good thing to get.
1:43
Speaker 1: And I don't know what they inject you with. They
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Speaker 1: inject you within active hepatitis, so your body can form anybody.
1:49
Speaker 1: So when you get with the active one, it's like
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Speaker 1: you can't stay here. C Jerry like got sick, and
1:55
Speaker 1: I was like, I feel good, I feel awful, my
1:58
Speaker 1: arms hurt, I feel so or. I feel like I'm
2:00
Speaker 1: getting sick because I also got the the T DApp Yeah,
2:04
Speaker 1: the the technics dip theory. Yeah, And um, I don't
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Speaker 1: feel very good right now, Chuck. Do you remember last
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Speaker 1: year when I got sick for like eighteen straight weeks.
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Speaker 1: That was fun. Well, I'm hoping to fight this one off.
2:15
Speaker 1: So we got Maddie in here. This is a pleasure
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Speaker 1: matte of lines and scissors. Are you guys still together?
2:21
Speaker 1: At one point the singer left and the guitar player left,
2:24
Speaker 1: and like Matt was left with a drum kit and
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Speaker 1: like a part time keyboard player or something. You can
2:30
Speaker 1: make something these days with that. I think it's weeks
2:33
Speaker 1: later they decided they wanted to be in the band again, though,
2:35
Speaker 1: so I think they were like working on a reunion
2:37
Speaker 1: tour now. And it all began with a camping trip
2:41
Speaker 1: that one person wasn't invited to this historic So Matt,
2:47
Speaker 1: good to have you here, my friend. I concur Do
2:51
Speaker 1: you have an intro? Or should we just say, let's
2:52
Speaker 1: talk about Braille. Let's talk about Brill. I do a
2:55
Speaker 1: little bit. You know much about Louis Braille. Yeah, sure.
2:59
Speaker 1: Louis Braille invented brail because he was a blind boy.
3:02
Speaker 1: You know how he got blind? He stuck something sharp
3:05
Speaker 1: in his eye. He did in all a w l yes,
3:10
Speaker 1: thank you. My thick tongue does not allow for distinction
3:12
Speaker 1: between all and all. He did that when he was
3:15
Speaker 1: three years old. Yeah. His dad was a leather worker
3:18
Speaker 1: and he used the all, which is a basically a
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Speaker 1: very sharp pointed instrument with a you could lobotomize somebody
3:25
Speaker 1: with it. It's a little big, but sure. He almost
3:28
Speaker 1: lobotomized himself with a gruesome lobotomy. He was screwed around
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Speaker 1: with it and it slid out of his hand and
3:33
Speaker 1: hit his eye right and then what he got infected? Yeah,
3:36
Speaker 1: he got infected and then he lost sight in his
3:38
Speaker 1: other eye because of sympathetic ophthalmia, which is when one
3:42
Speaker 1: eye says I that I's not gonna stick around, then
3:45
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go off the duty as well. Yeah, but
3:49
Speaker 1: that wasn't mentioned in this article. I thought that was surprising.
3:51
Speaker 1: It is a bit surprising. Um. That reminds me of
3:54
Speaker 1: a King of the Hill where Um Hank Hill goes
3:56
Speaker 1: blind in one eye and then he goes blind in
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Speaker 1: the other and Gary his mom's boyfriends, like, I've never
4:03
Speaker 1: heard of an eye sympathetically shutting down before. I was
4:06
Speaker 1: hoping you're gonna say it had something to do with con. No,
4:09
Speaker 1: I can't do a good con that was good. I
4:11
Speaker 1: gotta say it's con right, I'm a Oshan, and then
4:14
Speaker 1: you're supposed to say you're from the ocean. I can't
4:18
Speaker 1: do a good hand kill either of I don't watch
4:20
Speaker 1: it anymore. Every singday brought Tom Petty on. I'm like
4:22
Speaker 1: this yeah as a character, yeah, or as Tom Petty
4:27
Speaker 1: as a character. Yeah, it's awful. I love Petty and
4:30
Speaker 1: I love King of the Hill. Do you love Tom
4:32
Speaker 1: Petty because he's great? I'm sorry, I just threw up
4:35
Speaker 1: in my mouth a little bit. Um anyway, Wow, we
4:39
Speaker 1: already got off all right. Louis Brow was not wanting
4:44
Speaker 1: to be kept down despite an all sticking into his
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Speaker 1: eye and going completely blind by age three. Right. Yeah.
4:52
Speaker 1: He was inspired in fact, some years later when he
4:55
Speaker 1: was a teen by a visitor that came from the
4:58
Speaker 1: Royal Institution for Blind Youth, guy named Charles Barbier. Yeah.
5:02
Speaker 1: And this was in the early eighteen twenties or mid
5:05
Speaker 1: eighteen twenties, depending on who you ask. Late eighteen twenties.
5:09
Speaker 1: Other sources say early. Another issue with this article, uh,
5:13
Speaker 1: and he and this guy Barbia had invented a code
5:17
Speaker 1: called uh night riding to allow soldiers to communicate to
5:21
Speaker 1: each other in the dark. And this is not to
5:23
Speaker 1: be confused with night rider or night swimming. No, um,
5:29
Speaker 1: is it not night rider? I thought it was night rider.
5:32
Speaker 1: Night rider. I thought he invented the car. No, he
5:35
Speaker 1: invented night writing, totally different, and that did not catch
5:39
Speaker 1: on an army right right, So he he went to
5:43
Speaker 1: the School for the Blind where Louis Braille was twelve.
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Speaker 1: When Barbier visited, I guess and boom, yeah, smart little
5:52
Speaker 1: kid says I can use this. He yeah, and he could.
5:55
Speaker 1: And actually within three years he had worked out the kinks. UM.
5:59
Speaker 1: He basically optimized night writing UH, and UM created his
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Speaker 1: own system, which we know and love now is Brail
6:07
Speaker 1: at age fifteen. By age twenty, he prints. He published
6:11
Speaker 1: his first book in Brail Awesome. It was probably large
6:14
Speaker 1: and bulky, but strangely enough, Brail didn't catch on UH
6:19
Speaker 1: globally or even UM in France UH until after he died, right,
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Speaker 1: And even then it was popular with the Institute UH
6:28
Speaker 1: for Blind Youth, but it still wasn't like super widespread
6:31
Speaker 1: because and this is something I didn't know. This is
6:33
Speaker 1: sort of like the Totem podcast. There's all these little
6:35
Speaker 1: tidbits I never knew. Ah, there were competing codes, and
6:40
Speaker 1: different inventors came up with different code. So clearly, when
6:43
Speaker 1: there's different systems out there, it's going to be hard
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Speaker 1: to decide which one to use, and hard for one
6:47
Speaker 1: to become widespread. So that's one reason. Did you know
6:51
Speaker 1: there's no universal sign language. I believe it didn't know that. Yeah,
6:56
Speaker 1: one of the competing UM. I guess. A tactile alphabet
7:00
Speaker 1: is what you call these things in general. UM. It
7:03
Speaker 1: was created by a guy named Valentine. How we Yeah,
7:07
Speaker 1: I don't even know. You shouldn't even try h a
7:09
Speaker 1: u um out why it's not uter now it's um
7:12
Speaker 1: aout okay. UM. He created a system that is basically
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Speaker 1: kind of wavy uh Latin characters, but it looked very
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Speaker 1: much like the characters that we use here in the West,
7:28
Speaker 1: but they were a little waverer, a little more elongated,
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Speaker 1: I guess, ostensibly so that you could feel them more easily.
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Speaker 1: And still to this day some people UM considered this
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Speaker 1: type of tactile writing UM easier to learn. Very good point. Thanks.
7:48
Speaker 1: The thing is Brail eventually did catch on, chuck and um.
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Speaker 1: These days, Louis Brail is looked upon in much the
7:55
Speaker 1: same way that UM. Uh. Johann Guttenberg is Yeah, sure,
8:01
Speaker 1: I think actually UM. Helen Keller on the anniversary anniversary
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Speaker 1: of Louis Brail's death said something along the lines of um,
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Speaker 1: in our small way, we the Blinder is indebted to
8:13
Speaker 1: Louis Braila's mankind is the Gutenberg. Sure, he basically took
8:17
Speaker 1: a group of humans who were virtually unrecognized in the
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Speaker 1: educational system and gave them a way to become educated people.
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Speaker 1: Literate created literacy, both of them, Yeah, among the blind,
8:33
Speaker 1: and they both took a little while to catch on,
8:34
Speaker 1: largely because, um. What one of the reasons we said
8:38
Speaker 1: with the Brail is because they were competing codes. But
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Speaker 1: they're also the books. Brail books were really bulky and large.
8:44
Speaker 1: Still are, well, they still are, but back then, dude,
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Speaker 1: it was even worse. Like you didn't want to be
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Speaker 1: lugging around Brail books in your rucksack. No. And Tracy,
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Speaker 1: who wrote this article, um, is a huge Harry Potter fan.
8:57
Speaker 1: So she described how big Harry Potter and what the
9:01
Speaker 1: half Blood something else something I don't know whatever, Harry floodprints.
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Speaker 1: They go that Harry Potter book is fourteen volumes long,
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Speaker 1: and its Brail edition that's long. Yeah. Uh, and yet
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Speaker 1: they're heavy. They have to be um published uh using
9:17
Speaker 1: a loof loose leaf so that the with a with
9:20
Speaker 1: a ring binder in the middle so that the pages
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Speaker 1: can sit flat, so you can hit the cells all
9:24
Speaker 1: the way. And I think, actually, Chuck, we may be
9:27
Speaker 1: getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Let's talk about
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Speaker 1: Brail at its basis, like what it is literally, Yes, well,
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Speaker 1: Josh Louis Brail realized that the night writing method used
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Speaker 1: cells to create an alphabet using dots and dashes. Yeah,
9:44
Speaker 1: and originally Brail us dashes as well. Does not anymore. No,
9:49
Speaker 1: but the Brail cells today, they they're a little bit
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Speaker 1: different than um, the original Brail. They do not use dashes.
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Speaker 1: Like you said, there are two dots wide and three
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Speaker 1: dots tall. At this point, I w everybody who's listening
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Speaker 1: to this podcast to close your eyes. Okay, okay, you
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Speaker 1: have in your head a cell made up of six dots.
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Speaker 1: Like Chuck just said, it's two dots across and three
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Speaker 1: dots down in each of the columns. Right, so you
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Speaker 1: have one to three dots down, and to the next
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Speaker 1: column to the right, you have one to three dots down. Now,
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Speaker 1: if you go to the first dot on the first column,
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Speaker 1: which would be the one on the left hand side,
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Speaker 1: that's that's the number one dot, the one below that
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Speaker 1: is two, and then three. At the top of the
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Speaker 1: right hand um line of dots you have four and
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Speaker 1: then five and then six. Using these six dots, you
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Speaker 1: can create sixty three character combinations, correct, Josh, And you
10:46
Speaker 1: would think pretty easy because we've only got twenty six
10:50
Speaker 1: letters in our alphabet. But they also have to cover punctuation, contractions, um,
10:56
Speaker 1: musical notes, and symbols, basically anything you can think of.
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Speaker 1: The it you would be able to read with your eyes.
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Speaker 1: It needs to be accounted for within those Brail dots, right,
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Speaker 1: and there are some in the original Brail, the English
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Speaker 1: Brail alphabet. There Um, there is some punctuation included. Like uh,
11:13
Speaker 1: close your eyes again, everybody. Uh, go back to the
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Speaker 1: brail cell and think of it like a domino. That's
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Speaker 1: a rectangle with the dots inside. A dot in position
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Speaker 1: to alone is a comma. So remember that's the middle
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Speaker 1: one and the left hand column. Uh one, that is
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Speaker 1: the imposition six alone is the capital sign. Right, So
11:34
Speaker 1: you put that before the next character and you know
11:36
Speaker 1: that it's the it's a capital letter. Yeah. Um, And
11:40
Speaker 1: it just kind of goes on like this, right, And
11:42
Speaker 1: you also have to represent the numbers two we we
11:44
Speaker 1: forgot to add. So zero through nine are represented and
11:47
Speaker 1: you can obviously make up any combination with those, and
11:49
Speaker 1: you zero through nine are actually the same thing as
11:53
Speaker 1: letters A through J, but before each number you would
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Speaker 1: have a number sign, which like you have a capital
12:01
Speaker 1: sign before the next letter to indicate that it's the number.
12:03
Speaker 1: So the number sign is the letter or the third position,
12:08
Speaker 1: and then four or five and six, and then you
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Speaker 1: might have a B, C, D, E, F, G, H,
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Speaker 1: I or J, and then that would be a number
12:15
Speaker 1: instead of a letter. It sounds so complicated. It does,
12:19
Speaker 1: But I imagine if you are, UM looking at a
12:23
Speaker 1: book for the first time. I don't remember back that far,
12:26
Speaker 1: but if you're looking at a normal book, UM, you're
12:30
Speaker 1: probably like, I couldn't think of anything more complicated than
12:33
Speaker 1: I have to do exact And that's that's the point.
12:34
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up, because they say that
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Speaker 1: it is very much like learning to read and write
12:39
Speaker 1: for the first time, UM, using the same pathways in
12:42
Speaker 1: the brain. And should we talk about the Wonder machine
12:44
Speaker 1: real quick since I brought that up. Yeah, this is
12:46
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yes, the fm R I when they people
12:50
Speaker 1: read Brail their visual cortex. Visual cortex actually fires up. Yeah,
12:55
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of theories why. The first is
12:58
Speaker 1: that when you are line, do you have this uh
13:01
Speaker 1: basically this storage area that is put to use doing
13:05
Speaker 1: other stuff. Pretty cool, right, uh, which would be tactile
13:09
Speaker 1: sensory input rather than visual sensory input. Uh. And then
13:12
Speaker 1: the other theory, Chuck, is that the language processing centers
13:17
Speaker 1: actually serve as holding areas for this tactile information. So cool. Yeah,
13:22
Speaker 1: But because it's the brain, we really have no clue.
13:24
Speaker 1: We just don't know when it's firing up and when
13:26
Speaker 1: it's not. I've lost a tremendous amount of faith in
13:28
Speaker 1: the wonder machine, dude. Yeah. I read the study where
13:32
Speaker 1: this guy um scanned a dead salmon while he showed
13:35
Speaker 1: it pictures of humans and asked them what emotions it
13:39
Speaker 1: was showing. Any got a response on the m R
13:42
Speaker 1: I Yeah, that's disappointing. Yeah, it is so moving on, Josh.
13:46
Speaker 1: A typical line of brail is about forty characters, and
13:49
Speaker 1: a typical page of brails about lines, right, So think
13:52
Speaker 1: about that that domino. Each domino is a character, and
13:56
Speaker 1: in uncontracted brail or grade one brail every word is
14:01
Speaker 1: spelled out letter by letter, which is why the Harry
14:04
Speaker 1: Potter book is fourteen volumes long. Yeah, exactly right. So
14:07
Speaker 1: to combat against this huge bulky nous, they've come up
14:10
Speaker 1: with contracted brail Grade two brail. And this is when
14:15
Speaker 1: they group or or they contract braille literally using representations
14:21
Speaker 1: of whole words or letter combinations sort of like shorthand. Yeah,
14:24
Speaker 1: like ing or ed or the or. And they have
14:28
Speaker 1: their own, um rather than three cells for and you
14:32
Speaker 1: just have one in its and right. But there's a
14:34
Speaker 1: little controversy. There's always some people say that uncontracted brail
14:39
Speaker 1: is really important because it's a foundation for learning contracted brail,
14:43
Speaker 1: and opponents say that uncontracted rail is uh, time and
14:48
Speaker 1: space consuming and basically you just don't need to learn
14:51
Speaker 1: two codes. So why bother? That's a good question. I
14:56
Speaker 1: guess a good answer would be that, um, what is
15:00
Speaker 1: the standard? What are you gonna encounter? Contracted or uncontracted?
15:03
Speaker 1: When you're at the A T M machine, Uh, and
15:06
Speaker 1: you're you're you're reading the keys, is that contracted or uncontracted?
15:10
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure if I remember correctly, Uh, it's uncontracted
15:16
Speaker 1: it because yeah, there's one dot at the number one position,
15:19
Speaker 1: et cetera. I can read that kind of brail. Well. Yeah,
15:23
Speaker 1: and actually when there's a great illustration showing basic English
15:27
Speaker 1: the English brail alphabet, and um, it seems like something
15:31
Speaker 1: you could pick up if you really set your mind
15:33
Speaker 1: to it would be kind of cool. Should we talk
15:35
Speaker 1: more about? Uh? You you how you read it? Like
15:39
Speaker 1: you read it from left or right like a regular book,
15:41
Speaker 1: but you write it right to left? Is that correct? Yeah?
15:43
Speaker 1: You have to you when you make the impression on
15:46
Speaker 1: the page, you have to do it going from right
15:48
Speaker 1: to left because think about it, you're going to be
15:51
Speaker 1: flipping the page over to read the bomb. Pretty interesting. Interesting,
15:56
Speaker 1: And you can do this handheld still with a stylist. Yes,
15:59
Speaker 1: some books are translated from site books to brail hand
16:05
Speaker 1: by hand, which takes hundreds of hours, but that's not
16:08
Speaker 1: the way to do it anymore. I mean you can,
16:10
Speaker 1: but there's different ways. Um. Now, you can get a
16:14
Speaker 1: brail writer which has a key for each of the
16:16
Speaker 1: six dots, so the cell, which makes sense, makes sense.
16:19
Speaker 1: You can actually get a regular quarty keyboard attached to
16:22
Speaker 1: a brail printer, very easy to use. And um, what else,
16:27
Speaker 1: Josh well, if you want to read in the future
16:32
Speaker 1: right now, there's movable UM type that reads a screen
16:36
Speaker 1: line by line, and UM there's you have basically like
16:40
Speaker 1: a pad that has a recessed pins that represent a dot,
16:45
Speaker 1: and then based on what the line of text on
16:47
Speaker 1: the screen says, the corresponding dots pop up and you
16:51
Speaker 1: read them, and then as it goes down, they refresh
16:53
Speaker 1: and then pop up again. It's very motorized. It's very cool.
16:56
Speaker 1: I actually read UM an article about a NASA science
17:00
Speaker 1: hist who's figured out how to use UM. I think
17:03
Speaker 1: they're called like active polymers artificial muscles, basically to create
17:08
Speaker 1: a very highly compressed, movable type brail keyboard. So you
17:13
Speaker 1: could apply it to the iPhone or whatever. It looks
17:15
Speaker 1: like the future of it. That's pretty cool. Uh. And
17:18
Speaker 1: then there obviously, if you want to skirt around all
17:21
Speaker 1: the brail. Blind people use things like screen readers for
17:24
Speaker 1: their computer, to audio books obviously, and recordings of lecturers
17:30
Speaker 1: or friends and family letters from their friends and family.
17:33
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you remember, we did something
17:35
Speaker 1: on the webcast on a blind man being blind in
17:39
Speaker 1: Modern society and the New York Times, and this guy
17:42
Speaker 1: was very anti all these readers. He said, it basically
17:45
Speaker 1: makes blind people lazy, and they need to get out
17:48
Speaker 1: and and learn Brail, just as you need to go
17:52
Speaker 1: out and learn how to read, because you get a
17:53
Speaker 1: better understanding of a word if you understand how to
17:56
Speaker 1: spell it and write it and read it. And plus
17:59
Speaker 1: also it's you know, you use a different part of
18:02
Speaker 1: your brain to process language orally than you do visually
18:05
Speaker 1: or um tactically. Yeah, so I mean there's like a
18:08
Speaker 1: whole part of your brain that would be underdeveloped, and
18:11
Speaker 1: that just in and of itself is a bad idea,
18:14
Speaker 1: I would think. So. Um. They also have you can
18:16
Speaker 1: scan books now too. That's one of the easier ways
18:19
Speaker 1: to translate now using um optical character recognition technology, and
18:24
Speaker 1: you can scan a book and they can translate it
18:26
Speaker 1: into Brail for you. They well, you can send it
18:28
Speaker 1: to a brail printer. Well. Um, you can understand though
18:31
Speaker 1: why somebody who is blind would want to, you know,
18:36
Speaker 1: listen to an audio book. It is faster, apparently. Um.
18:40
Speaker 1: The average Brail reader can read at a rate of
18:43
Speaker 1: one to two hundred words per minute. By contrast, the
18:48
Speaker 1: average cited eighth grader can read about two hundred and
18:51
Speaker 1: five words per minute, and college students read about two
18:54
Speaker 1: d and eighty words per minute. So if you're in
18:57
Speaker 1: college and you're blind, it's probably not a necessarily a
19:00
Speaker 1: question of laziness. It's a question of just trying to
19:03
Speaker 1: keep up. You know, I'm a slow reader. What about you?
19:08
Speaker 1: Very slow? Are you interesting? I am too. Like when
19:11
Speaker 1: I read a book, I'm a I call it deliberate
19:14
Speaker 1: because yeah, I say you read slow, but I read
19:16
Speaker 1: very deliberately, and I'll reread a sentence to get it
19:19
Speaker 1: just right. I'm not a scanner at all. No, I'm
19:21
Speaker 1: not either, And I say scanner stink. I do too, Chuck.
19:24
Speaker 1: These people that I see reading like you take these
19:27
Speaker 1: tests where you read see how fast you can read
19:29
Speaker 1: reading comprehension. And I've done this on like people's blogs,
19:32
Speaker 1: and people logged on and said they read this many
19:35
Speaker 1: words and I literally didn't my eyes and time myself,
19:38
Speaker 1: and it's I can't even scan that fast. I don't
19:41
Speaker 1: see how they can be absorbing these words, so they're
19:43
Speaker 1: probably not. It's all just sitting there and working memory
19:45
Speaker 1: for a minute and then it's gone. I ingested, buddy,
19:48
Speaker 1: I do too, like a pie. Like pie or like
19:53
Speaker 1: a pie, like a whole pie. I thought you meant
19:56
Speaker 1: like pie, so chuck. Um. Still, like we said, there's
20:00
Speaker 1: all over the place many languages of Brail specific to
20:03
Speaker 1: that country. Yeah. Again, there's no universal Brail. There's not
20:07
Speaker 1: even a universal English Brail. The Brail in the UK
20:10
Speaker 1: and Wales and the United States are all different. Well, yeah,
20:14
Speaker 1: they're different codes. And luckily we have the the Brail
20:18
Speaker 1: Authority of North America here in the us of A.
20:21
Speaker 1: And they do publish standards for these codes. But you
20:25
Speaker 1: have to know what code you're reading, because the same
20:28
Speaker 1: cell can mean one thing in one code and something
20:30
Speaker 1: else in a different code. Right. And um, Also there's notations.
20:34
Speaker 1: There's Brail for music. English Brail American edition is used
20:39
Speaker 1: for things like novels and magazines, basically literature. Right. Then
20:44
Speaker 1: you have the nemic code of Brail mathematics and scientific
20:47
Speaker 1: notation for math and science because I mean, think about sigma.
20:50
Speaker 1: There's nothing in the English alphabet that that signifies sigma.
20:54
Speaker 1: And that thing pops up a lot and terrifies me
20:57
Speaker 1: whenever I see it in an equation. Me too. Uh.
20:59
Speaker 1: Then you've computer Brail code uh code for ASKEI A
21:03
Speaker 1: S C, I, A, K A, t um and chemical
21:08
Speaker 1: notations and music right right, So you the the whole
21:12
Speaker 1: point of these um standard authorities is to bring all
21:15
Speaker 1: this together so that they're uncited. People in their country
21:19
Speaker 1: can all know what the hell they're reading, right, and
21:21
Speaker 1: they're like we said, every country literally has their own brail,
21:26
Speaker 1: which there's even Chinese Brail with the characters representing sounds
21:30
Speaker 1: that make up the language. Hebrew brailed Josh as well,
21:33
Speaker 1: which sounds like the grade one brail, with each letter
21:36
Speaker 1: and number representing its own cell. And then, of course, Chuck,
21:41
Speaker 1: there's the newest Braille alphabet, which is Tibetan. Welcome Tibetan
21:47
Speaker 1: Brail to the family. A a woman named Sebrie ten
21:52
Speaker 1: Berkin created the code so that she could read Tobetan manuscripts,
21:57
Speaker 1: and she realized that she had just created a new
22:00
Speaker 1: Brail language and took it to to Tibet and started
22:04
Speaker 1: teaching blind Tibetan children. That's Tibetan Brail. So you could
22:07
Speaker 1: literally invent a brail method if you wanted to. Oh,
22:10
Speaker 1: I have really Josh Braille. Yeah uh, And you know
22:14
Speaker 1: they're still working on this. Many countries have agencies and
22:17
Speaker 1: departments that evaluate their own codes and try and uh
22:21
Speaker 1: institute or implement new improvements in technology. That kind of
22:24
Speaker 1: thing like this one I saw. I don't understand that
22:27
Speaker 1: the benefit here. So there's a new display prototype that
22:30
Speaker 1: can be rolled up like paper. Yeah, uh do people
22:34
Speaker 1: do we still do scrolls? Who does that? I think
22:36
Speaker 1: that's on its way out with the refreshable type. Aside
22:40
Speaker 1: from your like diploma and what what else poster of
22:44
Speaker 1: you know, anything that has to do with papyrus, it's
22:47
Speaker 1: generally scrolled, you know, silk, that kind of thing. I
22:50
Speaker 1: guess that's a good thing. And then well, uh well sorry,
22:53
Speaker 1: Brail libraries web, Brail libraries available online. So it seems
22:58
Speaker 1: like brail is everywhere, right, sure, I'll tell you one place.
23:01
Speaker 1: It's not in the United States. Oh no, it's just
23:04
Speaker 1: the fact of the day. Our currency chuck. Out. Of
23:08
Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty countries in the world that use
23:11
Speaker 1: paper currency, the United States is the only one that
23:14
Speaker 1: makes its paper currency the same size and the same shape,
23:17
Speaker 1: regardless of denomination. If you are blind, you have to
23:22
Speaker 1: come up with your own clever tricks to keep track
23:24
Speaker 1: of it. And you're although it probably rarely happens. You're
23:27
Speaker 1: constantly under throat of being ripped off because you have
23:30
Speaker 1: no idea. You just know you have a paper bill.
23:33
Speaker 1: It could be a one or a hundred. You have
23:35
Speaker 1: no clue. They fold the paper the bills. Isn't that
23:38
Speaker 1: one of the tricks? That is one trick. And there's
23:41
Speaker 1: a big debate even within UM blind uh blind advocacy
23:46
Speaker 1: groups of whether or not the U s should go
23:48
Speaker 1: to the trouble of putting any kind of tactile imprint
23:52
Speaker 1: on their currency or should blind people just make do
23:55
Speaker 1: you know, uh, but I'm getting you a gift, Chuck what.
24:00
Speaker 1: I went onto Amazon and I found this thing called
24:03
Speaker 1: the pocket brailer, okay, and it hooks on your key
24:06
Speaker 1: chain and it has UM one, two, three, four, five,
24:11
Speaker 1: has six little UM notches and you put the corner
24:16
Speaker 1: of your paper currency into the appropriate notch. So if
24:19
Speaker 1: it's the one, you put it in the one notch
24:21
Speaker 1: and you press down and you can actually emboss you
24:24
Speaker 1: can brail uh your currency. That's a great idea, not
24:27
Speaker 1: for yourself, but if a blind person ever comes in
24:30
Speaker 1: contact with it, they have it already brailed for him.
24:33
Speaker 1: So if everyone got these and did this to their
24:36
Speaker 1: the dollars that flow their way. Eventually we could have
24:39
Speaker 1: enough money out there that we're where we've done it ourselves. Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: I mean think about it. Just every time you came
24:44
Speaker 1: in contact with a piece of paper currency, you marked
24:47
Speaker 1: it forgot about it, got back into circulation. That kind
24:51
Speaker 1: of gets around, you know what I say to that?
24:53
Speaker 1: What So I'm going onto Amazon. It's actually from a
24:57
Speaker 1: site called maxie Aid, which is a very unfore name
25:00
Speaker 1: for a website, but they sell the pocket brailer for
25:05
Speaker 1: six dollars and seventy nine cents. And I'm getting you one, buddy. Really,
25:08
Speaker 1: I'm getting myself one. Two. That's pretty cool, all right. Well,
25:12
Speaker 1: if everyone else out there god him, then maybe we
25:13
Speaker 1: could make a real difference in this world. I agree,
25:17
Speaker 1: of course, that the blind people would have to know
25:20
Speaker 1: that this movement is going on, not necessarily I think
25:23
Speaker 1: the trust that they were marked correctly. Well, that's kind
25:25
Speaker 1: of thing. I mean, I'm sure there's a jerk out
25:27
Speaker 1: there who will do it the opposite way that Chris
25:30
Speaker 1: is going to hell anyway. So yeah, good point. Yeah, threefold,
25:33
Speaker 1: remember the which is rule of three right, come back
25:35
Speaker 1: in your head three times, buddy, If you want to
25:38
Speaker 1: read more about rail Um, you can type that ord
25:42
Speaker 1: b R A, I L L E into the handy
25:44
Speaker 1: search bar at how stuff works dot com, which leads us,
25:48
Speaker 1: of course to listener mail. Ye yes, Josh. Anyone out
25:55
Speaker 1: there who listens to this much of the show and
25:57
Speaker 1: listens to listener mail, all eight of you know two things.
26:01
Speaker 1: We love email from our young friends, Yes, and we
26:04
Speaker 1: love email in broken English, and we love free stuff.
26:08
Speaker 1: And this is both actually not all three. This is
26:11
Speaker 1: not free stuff. This is I'm gonna call this broken
26:13
Speaker 1: English from Young Lucy. Ah, Young Lucy. What is called
26:18
Speaker 1: the cutest recent immigrant in the United States is great
26:23
Speaker 1: and of course, as we always like to see O
26:25
Speaker 1: A and say, we're not making fun of anyone. This
26:28
Speaker 1: is doing a great job of writing in English, and
26:30
Speaker 1: we just think it's a good time. Hello Josh and
26:33
Speaker 1: Chuck from the podcast. I am fourteen years of age
26:36
Speaker 1: and I enjoy to listen to the podcast plenty good start.
26:40
Speaker 1: I write this on friends email due to the fact
26:43
Speaker 1: that I myself do not have email. I write another before,
26:47
Speaker 1: but is not certain if it arrived to the dwelling
26:50
Speaker 1: of you, so I write again. I love the podcast
26:53
Speaker 1: and the joke you say, make eye laughing so hard.
26:57
Speaker 1: That's good. So she thinks you're funny. I try hard
27:01
Speaker 1: on English, but it's still no good. Josh and Chuck
27:04
Speaker 1: helped plenty, and I find I learned new thing every
27:07
Speaker 1: one of the days. Awesome. So she's learning things all
27:10
Speaker 1: the time from us. She should her parents should probably
27:12
Speaker 1: be afraid. Probably so. I come to Canada from China
27:17
Speaker 1: and like to live here. Every day here is joyous,
27:20
Speaker 1: and all people are happy and also kind. That's about Canada.
27:23
Speaker 1: She must mean Vancouver. My mother jokes that I am
27:27
Speaker 1: too much in interest with podcasts and says she is
27:30
Speaker 1: wondering if I am in love with podcast Josh m M.
27:35
Speaker 1: I respond with wholehearted no, and declare him too married
27:39
Speaker 1: and he much too old for my young and small
27:41
Speaker 1: age fourteen. Very true. That is a good girl. Josh
27:45
Speaker 1: is not married, though, we should say. I listened to
27:48
Speaker 1: old podcast with Chris, and I'm wondered, why, oh why
27:52
Speaker 1: Chris does Josh work? Is Chris slave? Slavery not accepted
27:57
Speaker 1: in Canada, neither should in US? Agreed? Agreed. I love
28:02
Speaker 1: to hear you, and good day to you. I try
28:04
Speaker 1: hard to write this and I'm hoping happiness and health
28:06
Speaker 1: for you from your fan number one, Lucy. Goodbye, no
28:11
Speaker 1: use slave. Okay, Lucy, I am not married. I am
28:17
Speaker 1: very much taken, but I gotta tell yet. If I weren't,
28:19
Speaker 1: I would wait for you. You sound like a very
28:22
Speaker 1: she is quite a charmer, passionate, charming and lady. And
28:25
Speaker 1: welcome to Canada. But can I speak for Canadians? I
28:28
Speaker 1: guess welcome to Canada. We do here in the US anyway,
28:32
Speaker 1: And thanks for listening, Lucy. It's really very, very cute.
28:36
Speaker 1: So if you have a super heartbreakingly cute email that
28:41
Speaker 1: you want to send us, you know we like those
28:43
Speaker 1: a lot. We're suckers for him. You just wrap it up,
28:47
Speaker 1: send it along to stuff podcast at how stuff works
28:51
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
28:59
Speaker 1: Does it house to works dot com. Want more house
29:02
Speaker 1: stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
29:05
Speaker 1: works dot com home page. M HM brought to you
29:09
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29:13
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