Louis Braille
Louis Braille (born January 4, 1809 – died January 6, 1852) was the inventor of the braille writing system, a world-wide system used by blind and visually impaired people for reading and writing. Braille is read by passing one's fingers over characters made up of an arrangement of one to six embossed points. It has been adapted to almost every known language and dialect throughout the world.
Biography
Early years
Louis Braille was born in a small village of Coupvray, near Paris, into the family of Simon-René and Monique Braille. His father made harnesses and different leather goods, and young Braille used to play in his workshop. On one day, while playing with an awl, the tool accidentally poked his eye, what in the beginning seemed as a minor wound. The wound however got infected and Braille soon lost sight in both of his eyes. He was three years old.
In Paris
Braille started with education normally for his age, going to school together with his friends. At the very young age of ten, Braille earned a scholarship to the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institution for Blind Youth) in Paris, one of the first of its kind in the world. The scholarship was his ticket out of the usual fate for the blind, begging for money on the streets of Paris. However, the conditions in the school were not notably better. Braille 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 the church.
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 to these raised letters is 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!
Inventing the braille system
In 1821, Charles Barbier, a former soldier, visited the school. Barbier shared his invention called "synography" 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. Although the code was too difficult for the average soldier, Braille picked it up quickly.
The same year Louis began inventing his raised-dot system with his father's stitching awl, finishing at age 15. His system used only six dots and corresponded to letters, whereas Barbier's used 12 dots corresponding to sounds. 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.
Braille later extended his system to include notation for mathematics and music. The first book in braille was published in 1827 under the title Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them.
Braille became a teacher at the Institute in 1829, teaching grammar, geography, arithmetic, and music. He was well admired and respected by his pupils. Braille continued to revise and perfect his system, adding letter “w” and removing the dashes. 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.
Later years
The air at the Institute was foul and unhealthy, and many students got sick. Braille’s health also suffered, and he died in Paris of tuberculosis in 1852 at the age of 43. His body was disinterred in 1952, hundred years after his death, and honored with re-interment in the Panthéon in Paris.
Legacy
The significance of the braille system was not identified until 1868, sixteen years after Louis Braille died, when Dr Thomas Rhodes Armitage and a group of four blind men and one woman established the British and Foreign Society for Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind (later the Royal National Institute of the Blind), which published books in braille system.
A world congress that met in Paris in 1878, selected braille system as the official system of reading and writing for the blind. By 1890, braille was adopted in schools for the blind in Spain, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and England. In 1917, the United States started to use braille in its schools, and in 1949 United Nations began to adapt braille to more than two hundred languages throughout the world.
The asteroid “9969 Braille” was named in honor of him.
Publications
- Braille, Louis. 1829. Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Bickel, Lennard. 1989. Triumph over Darkness: The Life of Louis Braille. Ulverscroft Large Print. ISBN 0708920047
- Davidson, Margaret. 1991. Louis Braille, The Boy Who Invented Books For The Blind. Scholastic Paperbacks. ISBN 059044350X
- Fradin, Dennis B. 1997. Louis Braille: The Blind Boy Who Wanted to Read. Silver Burdett Press. ISBN 0382394690
- Freedman, Russell. 1997. Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille. Clarion Books. ISBN 0395775167
- Meyer, Carolyn. 1995. A New Method: The Story of Louis Braille. Louis Braille School at http://louisbrailleschool.org. Retrieved on June 4, 2007, <http://louisbrailleschool.org/resources/louis-braille/>
- O’Connor, Barbara. 1997. The World at His Fingertips: A Story About Louis Braille. Carolrhoda Books. ISBN 1575050528
- Potter, Tessa. 2002. Louis Braille (Famous People, Famous Lives). Franklin Watts Ltd. ISBN 0749643528
- Woodhouse, Jayne. 1998. Louis Braille. Heinemann Library. ISBN 1575725592
External links
- Biography of Louis Braille – Biography by Joe Sullivan
- Braille alphabet - A braille alphabet card
- Braille system - Text of his system (1839 original, in French)]
- Historical analysis and critical evaluation of braille – Chapter on Braille by Pamela Lorimer
- How braille began – Article on the history of the braille system
- The Life of Louis Braille – Biography at the Royal National Institute for the Blind website
- Louis Braille Biography – Biography at the American Foundation for the Blind website
- Louis Braille School – School for the blind in Edmonds, Washington
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