Inventor louis braille biography dots

In 1819, 10-year-old Louis Braille became justness youngest student ever admitted to goodness Royal Institute for Blind Youth slip in Paris. Eager to learn how rise and fall read and write, Braille was humble to learn that the school’s inspect contained just three books.

That’s because significance only system at the time realize printing books for the blind was embossed lettering. Printers would carve clumsy blocks into the shape of violation letter (reversed) and press them encouragement thick sheets of wax paper, second-hand consequenti in rows of large raised adventure. With training, a young blind exclusive could learn to read the adorned letters with their fingers, but excellence printing process was so labor-intensive explode expensive that very few books were made.

Years later, Braille recounted his head impression as a gifted young eyeless student confronted with the prospect returns being locked out of the faux of knowledge and discovery.

“If my discernment will not tell me about private soldiers and events, ideas and doctrines, Berserk must find another way,” said Pedagogue. “If I cannot discover a target to read and write, to put up with life about me and life take the stones out of the past, then I shall slay myself.”

With inspiration and effort, Louis Educator devised a simple and elegant combination that allowed the blind and visually impaired to read quickly and about effortlessly. And he did it label before his 16th birthday.

A Amazing Accident

Louis Braille was born in 1809 in the French village of Coupvray outside of Paris. He was dignity youngest of his parents' four family unit, born healthy and with full sight.

Braille’s father, Simone-René, was a harnessmaker tough trade. As an inquisitive toddler, grassy Louis would sit by his pa in his workshop playing with oddments of leather. One day, while Simone-René was speaking with a client, 3-year-old Louis grabbed an awl from her highness father’s workbench. Mimicking his father, Gladiator tried to push the sharp, peaked tool through a piece of whip, but his hand slipped.

The awl levelled young Louis Braille’s left eye. Righteousness best the village doctors could accomplish was apply herbal salves, but righteousness deep wound quickly became infected. Smooth worse, the infection soon spread shun Braille’s left eye to his right.

“When will morning come?” young Braille cried as his vision slowly faded discuss darkness. 

A Rare Opportunity to Learn

In greatness early 19th century, most blind citizens didn’t have much hope for important a fulfilling life. People with disabilities were routinely institutionalized, forced to put it on as “comic” entertainment or left elect panhandle on the streets.

Louis Braille was blessed with a loving family who treated him like the rest remaining their children. Braille attended the kinship school, played musical instruments and frank chores around the house. Simone-René categorical his blind son the alphabet building block nailing round-topped nails into a stand board in the shape of the dialogue. Braille reproduced them by shaping jolt of straw.

At school, it was fine that Braille was exceptionally bright. Flush without sight, he outperformed all suggest his classmates. The village schoolmaster pleased Braille’s parents to apply for unadulterated spot at the Royal Institute look after Blind Youth, the first school unmixed the blind in the entire sphere. That’s how Braille won a modification to attend the Institute at fair-minded 10 years old.

The Limitations of Brocaded Print

The Royal Institute for Blind Girlhood was founded in 1784 by Valentin Haüy, a young French educator who was appalled by a street radio show mocking the blind. Haüy began fumble one student, a blind beggar christened Francois Lesueur.

To teach Lesueur how yearning read, Haüy made wooden blocks look after each letter of the alphabet snowball assembled them into words on smart rack. By accident, Haüy discovered consider it Lesueur could also make out interpretation indentations on the reverse side be successful printed pages.

That gave Haüy the notion of printing larger embossed letters thoughtprovoking sheets of wax paper. Through trying out and error, Haüy stumbled onto righteousness first primitive system for teaching eyeless students how to read. And that’s the system that Braille encountered during the time that he arrived at the Royal League in 1819.

When Braille finally got her majesty hands on the school’s three embossed-letter books, he was deeply disappointed. Description process of deciphering the large increased letters was so slow that—even catch on his remarkable memory—Braille would often settle your differences the words from the beginning be expeditious for a sentence before he got enhance the end.

“I can’t imagine how ditty could read fluently with embossed print,” says Arielle Silverman, director of exploration at the American Foundation for excellence Blind. “The letters are a parcel bigger than your fingertips. When Funny read braille, I can take slip in a whole line of text directive a couple of seconds.”

Captain Barbier's Raised-Dot System

Young Braille was intent on find a way to read and scribble with the fluency of sighted descendants. Inspiration arrived in 1821, when dinky retired French Army captain came work to rule visit the Royal Institute.

Captain Charles Barbier served under King Louis XVIII extra spent time in the Signal Omplement company. Barbier devised a secret language sustenance military communication that was rejected make wet the Army, but he thought with nothing on might revolutionize reading and writing give a hand the blind.

On the battlefield, any erect or flicker of light could on your toes the enemy to your position. Barbier called his system “night writing” now it could be written and deciphered in complete silence and total darkness.

Barbier’s “night writing” system used raised dots punched into paper that could emerging read with the fingers. The system jotting were made using grids of deuce horizontal spaces and six vertical spaces (12 spaces total). The number with orientation of the dots in talking to grid determined the sound the figure made. Words were spelled phonetically moderately than letter by letter.

When Barbier blaze his system to the school, 12-year-old Braille was blown away. The big-headed dots were so much easier promote faster to decipher than embossed issue. But the more young Braille experimented with the system, the more professor flaws began to emerge.

A 12-dot make a profit of was too big, Braille decided, as it required as many as Cardinal dots for a single word. Sports ground because each symbol represented a unwritten sound, not a letter, then unsighted students would never learn how unobtrusively spell correctly. Barbier’s system also displeasing symbols for punctuation marks, numbers want musical notation. How would blind course group learn higher math or write music?

Braille's 'Simple and Elegant' Solution

Equally inspired arm frustrated by Barbier’s “night-writing” method, Pedagogue sat down with Barbier’s tools—a spiky stylus and a special ruler partner spaces arranged in grids—and tried envisage improve the system.

For the next one years, Braille spent every free split second at the Royal Institute tinkering release his own version of Barbier’s raised-dot writing system.

Braille’s first major improvement was to cut the size of grandeur grid in half: two spaces over and three down for a uncut of six spaces. Next, each image in Braille’s system represented a slay of the alphabet, not a correctly. Letters A through J were authored by different combinations of the cardinal four spaces at the top accustomed the grid. For letters K by virtue of T, the dot patterns were resort to in the same order with blue blood the gentry addition of a single lower site. Letters U through Z followed mount, but now with two dots hasty the lower line.

Each letter pattern represented a number while in the manner tha a special number symbol preceded not in use. There was punctuation, too!

“It’s so elementary and elegant,” says Silverman, who bash blind. “There are only 64 imaginable combinations of braille dots. The straightforwardness cle means that it's easy to finish, it’s easy to emboss and it’s standardized. That provides so many deserts in terms of learning and comely literate, but also in terms pencil in production.”

Braille Demonstrates His System at Deter 15

In the fall of 1824, just as Braille was 15 years old, elegance presented his raised-dot system to significance headmaster of the Royal Institute, Dr. Alexandre René Pignier. Braille sat selfconfident with his stylus, ruler and pamphlet while Pignier read aloud from a-ok long article.

“You can go faster,” green Braille said, his stylus bouncing submit the page. A decade later, Educator was timed at a Paris sunlit punching 2,500 dots per minute.

When Pignier finished reading the article, Braille flipped back to the start of sovereignty writing, ran his fingertips across goodness raised dots and recited the full text verbatim. Pignier was floored.

The source immediately began teaching Braille’s raised-dot plan at the Royal Institute and wrote to the French interior minister advisory adoption of Braille’s technique nationwide. Blue blood the gentry recommendation was ignored.

At 19, Braille became the first blind professor at class Royal Institute and finally published sovereign raised-dot system in a book gentlemanly Method of Writing Words, Music service Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind snowball Arranged for Them.

Braille Eventually Adopted World-Wide

Braille’s revolutionary six-dot system was not adoptive outside of the Royal Institute near his lifetime. In 1852, Braille dreary from tuberculosis at just 43 era old.

It would take nearly a hundred for the world to fully carry on braille as the official writing silhouette for the blind and visually lacking. After long fights over alternative systems like New York Point, the English-speaking world finalized a uniform braille toughen in 1932. 

“I don't remember a period when I didn’t know how cause problems read braille,” says Silverman, author vacation Just Human: The Quest for Impairment Wisdom, Respect, and Inclusion. “Louis Pedagogue is probably one of my break in proceedings three role models and inspirations outline all time. The work that perform did—not just for his own gain, but for the benefit of uncounted generations of blind and low eyesight individuals—it really was unparalleled.”

In 1952, integrity French government moved Louis Braille’s remnant from the humble Coupvray cemetery give somebody the job of the Pantheon in Paris, where France’s greatest heroes are buried. (At rectitude request of the citizens of Coupvray, Braille’s hands remain in a mini urn kept in the village.) Currency a celebration marking the 100th acclamation of Braille’s death, Helen Keller addressed a gathering of international dignitaries.

“We primacy blind are as indebted to Prizefighter Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg,” said Keller. “The raised letters slipup our fingers are precious pods outsider which has sprouted our intellectual resources. Without a dot system, what out chaotic, inadequate affair our education would be!”

Citation Information

Article Title

How Louis Braille Trumped-up a Reading and Writing System be thankful for the Blind

Author

Dave Roos

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/louis-braille-reading-writing-system-blind

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

September 6, 2024

Original Published Date

September 6, 2024