Louis Braille

Six dots. Six bumps. Six bumps in different patterns, like constellations, spreading out over the page. What are they? Numbers, letters, words. Who made this code? None other than Louis Braille, a French 12-year-old, who was also blind.

Louis Braille (English pronunciation: /ˈbreɪl/; French: [bʁɑj]) (January 4, 1809 – January 6, 1852) was the inventor of braille, a worldwide 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. And his work changed the world of reading and writing, forever.

Early life

Louis Braille was born in 1809 in a small town near Paris called Coupvray. He was from a poor family and his father worked as the village saddler. His father made harnesses and other leather goods to sell to the other villagers. Louis' father often used sharp tools to cut and punch holes in the leather.

One of the tools he used to makes holes was a sharp awl. An awl is a tool that looks like a short pointed stick, with a round, wooden handle. Deep in his Dad's harness workshop, Louis tried to be like his Dad, but it went very wrong; he grabbed an awl. As he bent over, the awl slipped and pierced his eye, damaging it forever. Some time later his other eye became infected by the first and he lost his sight altogether. Braille's other eye went blind because of sympathetic ophthalmia. He was just four years old and his future must have seemed uncertain.

Fortunately, Louis' parents, together with the local priest and school teacher, were alert to his superior learning abilities and eager to provide him with the opportunity to develop them to the fullest extent possible. So, when Louis became of school age, he was allowed to sit in the classroom to learn what he could by listening. Despite an initial assumption that his handicap would keep him well back of the other pupils, he was soon leading the class.

A thirst for knowledge

At the extraordinarily young age of ten, Braille earned a scholarship to the National Institute for the Blind in Paris, 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. Pupils were mainly taught practical skills like chair caning and slipper making so that they could make a living when they left school.

At the school, the children were taught basic craftsman skills and simple trades. They were also taught how to read by feeling raised letters where letters were created by pressing shaped copper wire onto a page. (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. Louis learnt quickly but found the system frustrating and slow. It was impossible for people with sight loss to write anything for themselves using raised type and it could take months to read a single book. He liked to learn and to play music. 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.

Finding the code

It was at the Institute in 1821 that Louis was first introduced to the idea of using a coded system of raised dots. Charles Barbier, a captain in Napoleon's army, visited the school to demonstrate his 'night writing'. This was a tactile system designed for soldiers to send and receive messages at night without speaking. It used raised dots and dashes rather than actual letters. Unfortunately, the code was too hard for the soldiers, but not for 12-year-old Louis!
Barbier later adapted the system and presented it to the Institution for Blind Youth, hoping that it would be officially adopted there. He called the system Sonography, because it represented words according to sound rather than spelling. While the Institution accepted Sonography only tentatively, Louis set about using and studying it with his customary intensity. Soon he had discovered both the potential of the basic idea and the shortcomings in some of Barbier's specific provisions, such as a clumsy 12-dot cell and the phonetic basis. Louis studied and re-invented the alphabet, making it especially handy for blind people. He used the spelling as a basis for the alphabet, instead of the phonetics Barbier used. He also replaced the Barbier's 12-dot cell by a 6-dot cell. Braille's system allowed you to read a letter by simply placing your finger on top of the six dot block, making it very simple to read. Due to his addiction to music, he also customized the Braille system so it could represent music.
Within three years, by 1824, aged just 15 years old, Louis had found 63 ways to use a six-dot cell in an area no larger than a fingertip, the system that we know today as braille. He had also perfected his 'planchette' or writing slate, which gave precise placing for the pattern of raised dots when writing braille. Then he published the first-ever braille book in 1829, named "Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Song by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged by Them".

Useful new system

Braille began experimenting with cut shapes from leather as well as nails and tacks hammered into boards. He finally settled on a fingertip-sized six-dot code, based on the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, which could be recognized with a single contact of one finger. By changing the number and placement of dots, he coded letters, punctuation, numbers, familiar words, scientific symbols, mathematical and musical notation, and capitalization. With the right hand the reader touched individual dots, and with the left hand he or she moved on toward the next line, grasping the text 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 instrument that was lined up with a metal guide.

In 1828, at the age of 19, Braille was hired as a teacher at the Institute and put in charge of teaching general education and music. Although Louis Braille went on to become a loved and respected teacher, was encouraged in his research, and remained secure in his own mind as to the value of his work, his system of touch reading and writing was nevertheless not very widely accepted in his own time. His system of Braille was not taught at the Institute while he was still alive.

At the age of twenty, Braille published a written account describing the use of his coded system. In 1837 he issued a second publication featuring an expanded system of coding text. He added symbols for math and music. King Louis Philippe (1773–1850) praised the system publicly after a demonstration at the Paris Exposition of Industry in 1834, and Braille's fellow students loved it. But sighted instructors and school board members worried that growing numbers of well-educated blind individuals might take away their jobs. They decided to stick with the embossed-letter system.

In 1839, Braille also developed a way to communicate with non-blind people using patterns of dots. He also allied with a man named Pierre Foucault to make a braille writing machine that greatly increased the efficiency of writing.

Recognition after death

Braille became somewhat well known as a musician, composer, and teacher, but he grew seriously ill with incurable tuberculosis (a lung infection) in 1835 and was forced to resign his teaching post. Shortly before his death, a former student of his, a blind musician, gave a performance in Paris, France. She made a point of letting the audience know that she had learned everything she knew using the forgotten system developed by the now-dying Braille. This created renewed interest in and a revival of the Braille system, although it was not fully accepted until 1854, two years after the inventor's death. The system underwent alteration from time to time. The version employed today was first used in the United States in 1860 at the Missouri School for the Blind.

Louis Braille died on January 6, 1852 in the building currently housing the National Institute for the Young Blind and was buried at Coupvray. He was only 43 years old. There was not a single newspaper in Paris that told of his death. Just six months later, the institute finally began using his system to instruct studetns to read and write. The braille system was finally recognized two years following his death in France in 1854. His cause of death was tuberculosis. In the years that followed, the practicality as well as simple elegance of his braille system was increasingly recognized, and today, in virtually every language throughout the world, it is the standard form of writing and reading used by blind persons. If a blind child is taught braille skills with the same sense of importance that is rightly attached to the teaching of print skills to sighted children, he or she will grow up able to read at speeds comparable to print readers, a life skill of inestimable value. Over 150 years after Louis Braille worked out his basic 6-dot system, its specific benefits remain unmatched by any later technology -- though some, computers being a prime example, both complement and contribute to braille. The braille system has since become the standard language for blind people and is used worldwide.

A hero for blind people

He spent his life teaching the system to as many people as possible, first as a fellow student at the school and then later when he became a teacher there. He translated many books into braille and was much liked and respected by his students.

Spending so much of his life in such poor and damp conditions probably contributed to Louis Braille contracting tuberculosis in his twenties. He battled with the illness for the rest of this life. Despite encountering much resistance to braille he never stopped believing in his system. He died on 6 January 1852, just two days after his 43rd birthday, unaware that his invention would one day be used all over the world. Braille began to spread worldwide in 1868, when Dr. Thomas Armitage, along with a group of four blind men, 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's system.

In 1952, Louis Braille's accomplishments were finally recognised by the French government and his body was exhumed and reburied in the Pantheon in Paris, with other French national heroes. Today he is celebrated as a hero for all blind and partially sighted people. He gave the gift of independence and the joy of reading to thousands of people around the world.

Today Louis Braille has had his portrait appearing on postage stamps. His home is today a museum. Other than that, Louis Braille is honored by having a street named after him in Netherton, Merseyside. The street is named "Louis Braille Close". Louis Braille gave his life to helping his students, his friends, and to improving his system for the blind. Now braille has been adapted so that it is in every major language and is the primary written communication system for the blind around the world. The braille code was eventually recognized for its practicality and simplicity and became a worldwide standard. And today, braille literacy is just as important as literacy itself.

Now practically every country in the world uses braille. Braille books have double-sided pages, which saves a lot of space. Braille signs help blind people get around in public spaces. And, most important, blind people can communicate independently, without needing print. It allows blind people to read, write, and conduct their daily affairs. Have you ever noticed the Braille dots on the ATM machine at your bank, for example? The system those dots represent came from the brilliant mind of Louis Braille. A boy who lost his sight from an unfortunate accident. A boy who went on to change his own world, as well as the world for other blind people. Louis proved that if you have the motivation, you can do incredible things.

"We the blind are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg . . . Without a dot system what a chaotic, inadequate affair our education would be!" Helen Keller



*finally i have done 1 of my assignment. full of satisfaction now :D*

*jeing, 23/1/10, 1.25am*