Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809, in a small town named Coupvray, near Paris. His life was like other children who were living in France at the time. Until one fateful day came that would place the biography of Louis Braille into history books. Louis Braille, the boy that helped himself, as well as millions of blind children and adults around the world, when he became a boy inventor.
When Braille was just three years old, he went into his father’s harness workshop one day. Young Braille wanted to copy after his father, so he grabbed an awl and began to try to punch holes in some leather. Unfortunately, the awl slipped in the boy’s small hands, and his eye became injured. The eye injury later became infected. Then, to make matters worse, the infection spread to Louis Braille’s other eye. As a result, the boy ended up losing the eyesight in both of his eyes.
Now that he was blind, Louis Braille’s life was completely changed. The normal future for a blind person was to become a beggar on the streets. However, his parents sent him to a regular school for the next few years. It was difficult for Braille to learn just by listening to what was going on around him. Finally, when Braille was ten years old, he was sent to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. The blind school wasn’t much better for Braille. The teachers basically spoke the lessons to their blind pupils, and the French boy wasn’t learning anything… he was bored. The library had fourteen books that contained raised letters for the blind students, but they were difficult to read.
Even though Louis Braille was blind, he was an intelligent student. He learned to play the cello, as well as the organ.
In the meantime, a former soldier named Charles Barbier had invented “Night Writing.” The writing basically consisted of twelve raised dots. By using the Night Writing technique, and feeling the raised dots, soldiers could communicate top secret information without saying a word. However, the problem was, the soldiers had trouble learning Barbier’s system of communication.
Charles Barbier took his Night Writing invention to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris in 1821. Louis Braille was now twelve years old. Braille again used his father’s awl to streamline Barbier’s method of sightless communication. He reduced the twelve dots down to six. Instead of using dots to represent sounds as Barbier did, Braille’s dots represented letters. And, the dots could be felt all at once, which reduced the clumsy comprehension of the Night Writing system.
By the time he was fifteen years old, Louis Braille had invented the “Braille” system of reading and writing.
Finally, in 1829, Louis Braille, the boy inventor who was now an adult man, published his first book using the revised system. It was titled, Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. Braille then added mathematics and music symbols to his book in 1837.
After Louis Braille graduated from school, he became a teacher at the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. Still, though, the Braille language wasn’t widely accepted. So blind students had to learn this method of reading and writing on their own. It wasn’t until 1868, thirty-six years after Braille’s death, that another organization called the Royal National Institute for the Blind, began to encourage the use of Braille’s system.
Today, the Braille language is used in nearly every country in the world. It has been converted to cover almost every language. It allows blind people to read, write, and conduct their daily affairs. Have you ever noticed the Braille dots on the ATM machine at your bank, for example? The system those dots represent came from the brilliant mind of Louis Braille. A boy who lost his sight from an unfortunate accident. A boy who went on to change his own world, as well as the world for other blind people.
Louis Braille is honored by having a street named after him in Netherton, Merseyside. The street is named “Louis Braille Close.”
