Louis Braille
Louis Braille (January 4, 1809–January 6, 1852) was the inventor of the Braille writing system for the blind.
Louis Braille
Braille was born in Coupvray near Paris, France. His father, Simon-René Braille, was a harness and saddle maker. At the age of three Louis injured his left eye with an awl (sharp cutting implement) from his father's workshop. This destroyed his left eye, which lead to the infection of his right. Louis was blind by the age of four.
At the age of ten, Louis earned a scholarship to the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institution for Blind Youth) in Paris.
At the school, the children were taught to read by feeling raised letters (a system devised by Valentin Haüy) but they couldn't write because the printing was made with wire letters pressed on to paper.
In 1821, a former soldier named Charles Barbier visited the school. Barbier shared his invention called "night writing," a code of twelve raised dots that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without even having to speak. Unfortunately, the code was too hard for the soldiers. Louis, however, picked it up quickly.
That year, Braille began inventing his raised-dot system, finishing at age fifteen. Braille used only six dots, where Barbier had used twelve. The Braille system offered numerous benefits over Valentin Haüy's raised letter method, the most notable being the ability to both read and write the language.
Braille later extended his system to include notation for mathematics and music, becoming professor at the institution before dying of tuberculosis at 43. He is buried in the Panthéon, Paris, France.
For a period after his death, the Braille system went unnoticed. Its significance was not identified until 1868, when the British Dr. Thomas Armitage, along with a group of four blind men, established the Royal National Institute of the Blind, publishing books in Braille's alphabet. Today, Braille is an international alphabet used worldwide.
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