Louis Braille
invented "Braille", a world wide system of embossed type used by
blind and partially sighted people for reading and writing.
Louis was a bright and inquisitive child. At the age of 3, while
playing in his father's shop, Louis injured his eye on a sharp tool.
Infection set in and soon spread to the other eye as well, leaving
him completely blind. He was allowed to sit in the classroom to
learn what he could by listening. At the extraordinarily young age
of ten, Louis was sent on scholarship to the Royal Institution for
Blind Youth in Paris. There too, most instruction was oral, although
there were some books in a raised-print system. The general idea of
a tactile alphabet that would allow blind persons to read and write
began to take shape in his mind at this time.
It was Charles Barbier who actually invented the basic technique of
using raised dots for tactile writing and reading. Barbier called
the system Sonography, because it represented words according to
sound rather than spelling. He presented it to the Institution for
Blind Youth. Soon, Louis had discovered both the potential of the
basic idea and the shortcomings in some of Barbier's specific
provisions, such as a clumsy 12-dot cell and the phonetic basis. By
age 15, Louis had developed the system that we know today as
Braille, employing a 6-dot cell and based upon normal spelling. He
also went on to lay the foundations of the Braille representation of
music, and in 1829 published the Method of Writing Words, Music and
Plain Song by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged by
Them. Louis Braille eventually became a teacher in the school where he had
been a student. He was admired and respected by his pupils but,
unfortunately, he did not live to see his system widely adopted. He
had always been plagued by ill health and in 1852, at the age of 43,
he died from tuberculosis.
In France itself, Louis Braille's achievement was finally recognized
by the state. In 1952 his body was moved to Paris where it was
buried in the Pantheon, the home of France's national heroes. In the
years that followed, the practicality as well as simple elegance of
his Braille system was increasingly recognized, and today, in
virtually every language throughout the world, it is the standard
form of writing and reading used by blind persons.
