Louis Braille

• Born: 4 January 1809
• Birthplace: Coupvray, France
• Died: 6 January 1852
• Best Known As: Inventor of the raised-point writing system for the blind

Louis Braille was a French musician and educator who developed the raised-point writing system for the blind that bears his name. Braille became blind as a result of an eye injury at the age of three. Despite his impairment, he went to a regular school, then earned acceptance to a state school for the blind. By the time he was 15 years old he had perfected a system of embossed dots that could be used to translate text through the sense of touch. He first published his system in 1829, but it wasn't until the last years of his life that it became to be accepted. A musician and teacher of the blind, Braille suffered bouts of ill health throughout most of his adult life, probably because of tuberculosis. After his death the "braille" system was promoted by his former students and friends, and by 1854 France had officially adopted it. It spread internationally and is now the most widely-used system for teaching the written word to the blind.

Another system of reading by touch was developed in the 19th century by the English clergyman William Moon.

(click to enlarge)
Louis Braille, portrait bust by an unknown artist. (credit: Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin)

(born Jan. 4, 1809, Coupvray, near Paris, France — died Jan. 6, 1852, Paris) French educator who developed the Braille system of printing and writing for the blind. Himself blinded at the age of three in an accident, he went to Paris in 1819 to attend the National Institute for Blind Children, and from 1826 he taught there. Braille adapted a method created by Charles Barbier to develop his own simplified system.

For more information on Louis Braille, visit Britannica.com.

Louis Braille (1809-1852) designed the coding system, based on patterns of raised dots, by which the blind can read through touch.

Braille designed a coding system, based on patterns of raised dots, which the blind could read by touch. Born in Coupvray, France, Braille was accidentally blinded in one eye at the age of three. Within two years, a disease in his other eye left him completely blind.

In 1819, Braille received a scholarship to the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute of Blind Youth), founded by Valentin Haüy (1745-1822). The same year Braille entered the school, Captain Charles Barbier invented sonography, or nightwriting, a system of embossed symbols used by soldiers to communicate silently at night on the battlefield. Inspired by a lecture Barbier gave at the Institute a few years later, the fifteen-year-old Braille adapted Barbier's system to replace Haüy's awkward embossed type, which he and his classmates had been obliged to learn.

In his initial study, Braille had experimented with geometric shapes cut from leather as well as with nails and tacks hammered into boards. He finally settled on a fingertip-sized six-dot code, based on the twenty-five letters of the alphabet, which could be recognized with a single contact of one digit. By varying the number and placement of dots, he coded letters, punctuation, numbers, diphthongs, familiar words, scientific symbols, mathematical and musical notation, and capitalization. With the right hand, the reader touched individual dots and, with the left, moved on toward the next line, comprehending as smoothly and rapidly as sighted readers. Using the Braille system, students were also able to take notes and write themes by punching dots into paper with a pointed stylus which was aligned with a metal guide.

At the age of twenty, Braille published a monograph describing the use of his coded system. In 1837, he issued a second publication featuring an expanded system of coding text. Despite the students' favorable response to the Braille code, sighted instructors and school board members, fearing for their jobs should the number of well-educated blind individuals increase, opposed his system.

Braille grew seriously ill with incurable tuberculosis in 1835 and was forced to resign his teaching post. The Braille writing system - though demonstrated at the Paris Exposition of Industry in 1834 and praised by King Louis-Philippe - was not fully accepted until 1854, two years after the inventor's death. The system underwent periodic alteration; the standardized system employed today was first used in the United States in 1860 at the Missouri School for the Blind.

Further Reading

Bickel, Lennard, Triumph Over Darkness: The Life of Louis Braille, Allen & Unwin Australia, 1988.

Bryant, Jennifer, Louis Braille: Inventor, Chelsea House, 1993.

Roblin, Jean, Louis Braille, Royal National Institute for the Blind.

Tutor's tip: A "brail" is a line used in sailing, while "braille" is a system of writing for the blind that uses raised-dot characters.

Louis Braille
Born	January 4, 1809(1809-01-04) Coupvray, France
Died	January 6, 1852 (aged 43) Paris, France
Resting place	Panthéon, Paris 48°50′46″N 2°20′45″E / 48.84611°N 2.34583°E / 48.84611; 2.34583

Louis Braille (English pronunciation: /ˈbreɪl/; French: [bʁɑj]) (January 4, 1809 – January 6, 1852) was the inventor of braille,^[1] a world-wide system used by blind and visually impaired people for reading and writing. Braille is read by passing the fingers over characters made up of an arrangement of one to six embossed points. It has been adapted to almost every known language.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Development of the Braille System 3 Death and honors 4 See also 5 Notes 6 External links

Early life

Louis Braille became blind at the age of 3, when he accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with a stitching awl, one of his father's workshop tools. Braille's other eye went blind because of sympathetic ophthalmia.

At the very young age of 10, Braille earned a scholarship to the National Institute for the Blind in Paris^[2], one of the first of its kind in the world. However, the conditions in the school were not notably better. Louis was served stale bread and water, and students were sometimes abused or locked up as a form of punishment.

Braille, a bright and creative student, became a talented cellist and organist in his time at the school, playing the organ for churches all over France.

At the school, the children were taught basic craftsman skills and simple trades. They were also taught how to read by feeling raised letters (a system devised by the school's founder, Valentin Haüy). However, because the raised letters were made using paper pressed against copper wire, the students never learned to write. Another disadvantage was that the letters weighed a lot and whenever people published books using this system, they put together a book with multiple stories in one in order to save money. This made the books sometimes weigh over a hundred pounds. The school had just 14 books, all of which Louis had read.

Development of the Braille System

In 1821, Charles Barbier, a Captain in the French Army, visited the school. Barbier shared his invention called "night writing" a code of 12 raised dots and a number of dashes that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without having to speak. The code was too difficult for Louis to understand and he later changed the number of raised dots to 6 to form what we today call Braille. Braille later extended his system to include notation for mathematics and music. The first book in braille was published in 1829 under the title Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. In 1839 Braille published details of a method he had developed for communication with sighted people, using patterns of dots to approximate the shape of printed symbols. Braille and his friend Pierre Foucault went on to develop a machine to speed up the somewhat cumbersome system.

"Louis Braille" in braille

Braille's tomb in the crypt of the Panthéon.

The same year, Louis Braille began inventing his raised-dot system with his father's stitching awl, the same implement with which he had blinded himself, finishing at age 15, in 1824. His system used only six dots and corresponded to letters, whereas Barbier's used 12. The six-dot system allowed the recognition of letters with a single fingertip apprehending all the dots at once, requiring no movement or repositioning which slowed recognition in systems requiring more dots. These dots consisted of patterns in order to keep the system easy to learn. The Braille system also offered numerous benefits over Haüy's raised letter method, the most notable being the ability to both read and write an alphabet. Another very notable benefit is that because they were dots just slightly raised, there was a significant difference in make up.

Death and honors

Braille became a well-respected teacher at the Institute. Although he was admired and respected by his pupils, his braille system was not taught at the Institute during his lifetime. The air at the institute was foul and he died in Paris of tuberculosis in 1852 at the age of 43; his body was disinterred in 1952 (the centenary of his death) and honored with re-interment in the Panthéon in Paris. His system was finally officially recognized in France two years after his death, in 1854. ^[3]

On the occasion of bi-centenary of Louis Braille, India and the United States have issued special commemorative coins of INR 100, INR 2, and USD 1. The US coin includes the denomination written in braille and was introduced Spring 2009.

See also

• Braille
• Screen reader
• Accessibility
• Morse code
• Slate and stylus

Notes

1. ^ To prevent confusion the proper noun "Braille" is written in lower case ("braille") when referring to the writing system. It is also pronounced differently: /ˈbreɪl/
2. ^ Vision Australia, http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=787
3. ^ [1] Pamela Lorimer (1996), Historical analysis and critical evaluation of braille, Ch.2

External links

• Celebrating 200 Years of Braille
• Louis Braille Online Museum - American Foundation for the Blind
• Louis Braille Biography for Kids - Braille Bug
• The Life of Louis Braille - Royal National Institute for the Blind
• Biography of Louis Braille
• Louis Braille : Text of his system (1839 original, in French)
• A braille alphabet card
• Pamela Lorimer (1996), Historical analysis and critical evaluation of braille
• Article on Louis Braille at Encyclopedia Britannica

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