Who was Louis Braille?
Louis Braille was born in 1809 in a small town near Paris called Coupvray. He was from a poor family and his father worked as the village saddler.
One day, when he was a small boy, he crept into his father's workshop to play. He picked up an awl, a sharp tool used for making holes in leather. As he bent over, the awl slipped and pierced his eye, damaging it forever. Some time later his other eye became infected by the first and he lost his sight altogether. He was just four years old and his future must have seemed uncertain. However Louis Braille was to become one of the most famous Frenchmen ever to have lived.
A thirst for knowledge
Despite his difficult start in life, Louis was an intelligent boy and excelled at the local school. Noticing his potential, the local landowner offered to arrange a scholarship for Louis at one of the first schools for the blind. Reluctant to send Louis away from home but worried about his future, his parents agreed. Aged ten, Louis left for Paris to attend the Royal Institution for Blind Youth.
Life at the school was hard, the building was damp and unhealthy, and discipline was severe. Pupils were mainly taught practical skills like chair caning and slipper making so that they could make a living when they left school.
Being so far away from his family was difficult for Louis but he always retained his thirst for knowledge. The boys were taught to read using a system called 'raised type' where letters were created by pressing shaped copper wire onto a page. Louis learnt quickly but found the system frustrating and slow. It was impossible for people with sight loss to write anything for themselves using raised type and it could take months to read a single book.
Finding the code
It was at the Institute in 1821 that Louis was first introduced to the idea of using a coded system of raised dots. Charles Barbier, a captain in Napoleon's army, visited the school to demonstrate his 'night writing'. This was a tactile system designed for soldiers to send and receive messages at night without speaking. It used raised dots and dashes rather than actual letters.
Louis quickly realised how useful this system could be, but thought it was too complicated. Over the next few years he worked hard to develop his own version of the code, using just six dots to represent the standard alphabet.
By 1824, aged just 15 years old, Louis had found 63 ways to use a six-dot cell in an area no larger than a fingertip. He had also perfected his 'planchette' or writing slate, which gave precise placing for the pattern of raised dots when writing braille.
A hero for blind people
He spent his life teaching the system to as many people as possible, first as a fellow student at the school and then later when he became a teacher there. He translated many books into braille and was much liked and respected by his students.
Spending so much of his life in such poor and damp conditions probably contributed to Louis Braille contracting tuberculosis in his twenties. He battled with the illness for the rest of this life. Despite encountering much resistance to braille he never stopped believing in his system. He died on 6 January 1852, just two days after his 43rd birthday, unaware that his invention would one day be used all over the world.
In 1952, Louis Braille's accomplishments were finally recognised by the French government and his body was exhumed and reburied in the Pantheon in Paris, with other French national heroes. Today he is celebrated as a hero for all blind and partially sighted people. He gave the gift of independence and the joy of reading to thousands of people around the world.
"We, the blind, are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg." Helen Keller
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