The diving bell and the butterfly
by Jean-Dominique Bauby · first published 1997
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10HN commenters
2008–2025first – last mentioned
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In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor in chief of French Elle, the father of two young children, a forty-three-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brain stem. After twenty days in a coma, Bauby awoke into a body that had all but stopped working: only his left eye functioned, allowing him to see and, by blinking, to make clear that his mind was unimpaired. Almost miraculously, he was soon able to express himself in the richest detail, blinking to select le
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…consider more important, having survived several life-shattering crises. - The Tao Te Ching, especially Ron Hogan's translation (freely downloadable here: http://beatrice.com/wordpress/tao-te-ching) - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby - Getting Things Done, David Allen - Gimp, Marc Zupan - Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows - Leadership Step by Step, Joshua Spodek (full disclosure: me, https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/...)…
on “Ask HN: Which books have made you introspect?” ↗I think morse code could be helpful for someone with locked-in syndrome, like Jean Bauby. In 'dictating' his memoir 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', it took him an average of two minutes to write each word by blinking at the time when the next letter he wanted was presented to him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butter...
on “Another Reason to Learn Morse Code: Kidnapping” ↗Yeah that would work. Also, the method they used to allow the writer, Jean-Dominique Bauby, to write the Diving Bell and the Butterfly in which a single response would select a letter of the alphabet read out loud.
on “Ask HN: How to two-way communicate with her?” ↗When I watched "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", it occurred to me that Bauby could have communicated much faster if he had known Morse code, rather than by having an assistant cycle through a set of cards, each displaying a letter of the alphabet.…
on “The Art and Skill of Radio-Telegraphy 3rd Edition [pdf]” ↗Another fairly well-known account of locked-in syndrome would be The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby (also made into a movie); in his case the precipitating event was a stroke.
on “Trapped in his body for 12 years, a man breaks free (2015)” ↗Indeed. Similarly, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby, who had suffered a stroke with locked-in syndrome, by blinking his left eyelid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butter...
on “If you are reading this obituary, it looks like I'm dead” ↗I actually read "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" a while back and all I could think the whole time was "binary search, binary search, huffman tree, something other than linear search please god".
on “A keyboard without keys - Dasher” ↗Despite his condition, he wrote the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by blinking when the correct letter was reached by a person slowly reciting the alphabet over and over again. Man, how did they not work up a system like morse code? That's horrible. Mad props for the…
on “Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to do un-motivating work?” ↗…then write out however slowly. Think of it as a bigger buffer. In rare cases it can become enormous, and people write entire novels in their head before ever putting ink on paper (famous example: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", which was written at a rate of about one word every 2 minutes). Or, they learned to create and capture design decisions in higher-density media (like diagrams or pseudocode), which, again, can then…
on “Command line tools every web dev needs to know” ↗The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. That wasn't discredited. They were able to blink, and using a second person reciting the alphabet he dictated his book
on “Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)” ↗In ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ there is a point where the author, who is suffering locked-in syndrome after a stroke, is communicating by having the letters of the alphabet shown to him one at a time, with him choosing by making…
on “Koch method to learn Morse” ↗There’s a book and movie adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, written by a guy who was awake and mostly paralyzed but worked out how to communicate by blinking his eyes.
on “International Study Detects Consciousness in Unresponsive Patients” ↗