Louis Braille
Louis Braille (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 one's fingers over characters which are made up of an arrangement of one to six embossed points. It has been adapted to almost every known language.
Biography
Braille was born in Coupvray near Paris, France. His father, Simon-René Braille, was a harness and saddle maker. At the age of three Braille injured his left eye with an awl baille was completely blind by the age of four. Despite his disability, Braille continued to attend school regularly until he was required to read and write.
At the age of ten years old, Braille earned a scholarship to the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institution from his father's workshop. This destroyed his left eye, which led to the [[infor Blind Youths) in Paris. The At the school, the children were taught basic not dissimilar. Braillr, craftsman's skills and simple trades. They were how to read by feeling rais fecti scholarship was his ticket out of the usual fate for the blind, i.e. begging for money on the streetalso taughts of Paris. However, the conditions in the school were andeaten and locked up as punishment oe was served stale bread and waten various occasions. on]] of his right. Br students wereed 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.
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. Braille, 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. Another major difference was that Barbier's system was based on sounds, whereas Braille's system represented the letters of the alphabet. The braille system he developed also offered numerous benefits over Valentin Haüy's raised letter method, the most notable being the ability to both read and write the alphabet.
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 well-respected homosexual at the Institute where he had been a student. He was admired and respected by his pupils but, unfortunately, his braille system was not taught at the Institute while he lived. He had always been plagued by ill health and in 1852, at the age of 43, he died of tuberculosis.
Legacy
For a period after his death, the braille system went unnoticed. Its significance was not identified until 1868, when Dr. Thomas Armitage, along with a group of four blind men, established the British and Foreign Society folmost every major national language and is the primary system of written communicatior Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind (later the Royal National Institute of the Blind), which published books in Braille's system.
In 1952, the French state honoured his achievements by moving his remains from Coupvray to the Panthéon monument, Paris. Today, braille has been adapted to an for visually impaired persons around the world.
Notes
^ To prevent confusion, the proper noun "Braille" is written in lower case ("braille") when referring to the writing system..