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Principes d’expéditive française pour écrire aussi vite que la parole, seconde édition, considérablement augmentée par l’auteur; suivie d’un procédé d’écriture coupée pour suppléer la plume ou le crayon et exécuter plusieurs copies à-la-fois sans tracer de caractères, par Ch. Barbier.

Paris: de l’imprimerie de Gillé fils (on leaf before title: Se trouve à Paris, chez Desenne aîné... Lenormand... Petit), 1809.

Collation: 8vo, [pi]⁶ (–[pi]6) b⁴ (+/– b4) 1⁴ (–1/4 + 2) [2]⁴ (2/4 –1) 3⁴ [4]² [² 4]² 5⁴ (+/–5/3) 6–7⁴ 8² (+/–8/2), 39 leaves, pp. [2] xvi 60. Author’s authenticating signature and address on verso of half-title. Wood-engraved examples in the text.
Plates: Engraved plates at pp. 1 and 54 and a folding letterpress table at p. 43.
Condition: 220 x 135mm, untrimmed.
Binding: Contemporary pastepaper boards. Spine torn.
Provenance: ‘Ex dono authoris’ on free endleaf.
References: FRBNF30054772 (pagination omits the preliminary leaf giving the names of 3 booksellers).
Price: £950

Second edition of Tableau d’éxpedigraphie, 1808.

¶ This very rare pamphlet is the first publication of Barbier’s system of ‘cut writing’, done with a pocket-knife. The first part of the pamphlet, which was first published in the previous year, is a system of short-hand. Barbier was a captain in the Napoleonic army and wanted a method of rapid and secret writing for use in the field. ‘Cut-writing’ was his first idea; after this he invented a system of punched dots made with a blunt stylus. In 1821 the latter system was tested at the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles, where the young Braille, aged 12, was one of the pupils involved in the trials. The system we know today as Braille is an alphabetical version of Barbier’s phonetic system: Braille writing should really be called Barbier-Braille.

The plethora of cancels in such a short book suggests that Barbier was still working out his ideas as it went through the press, and presumably very few copies were distributed. The book is not in OCLC or RLIN but there are copies in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, National Library of Scotland and Library of Congress.

<<M. Charles Barbier made several attempts to form a good shorthand system, and though he received favourable reports and even “rapports d’encouragement” from the Academy of Sciences, his attempts did not result in doing more than producing, not a system proper, but only what may be included in any list of rapid writings.

>>Thomas Anderson, History of Shorthand (London, 1882), p.  159.

Literature: Pierre Henri La vie et l’oeuvre de Louis Braille (Paris, 1952) pp. 35–48.