Louis Braile - The Person Who Invented The Braille

In 1812, in a village called Couvray that is found in France lies a person called Louis Braille. At the time, he was playing in his father's workshop who happens to make horse guard rope for his customers.

His father, Simon was known for being focused and precise with his craftsmanship and spent most of his days cutting leather with sharp tools to be made into a rope. Louis was born on 4 January 1809 when an unfortunate incident blinded his eye when he was merely 3 years old.

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In one instance, Simon went to discuss something with his customers leaving Louis all alone in the workshop. Louis took one of the tools and tried to imitate what he witnessed his father doing each day.

He accidentally stabbed the tool on himself and blood start pouring out when Louis's parents noticed it and quickly helped him out. Well, you may have guessed where he stabbed it. Since there were not any hospitals nearby on top of their lack of first aid back then, Louis was in a heap of trouble.

Louis' parents took him to see a traditional medical practitioner who wrapped Louis' left eye with cloth dipped in herbs. However, the infection was overwhelming that it quickly spread to his right eye.

Despite successfully treating his eye, the damage has already been done and for a child who does not understand anything, Louis kept asking why his vision started to blur out until he became blind completely when he was 5 years old.

Continuing His Studies

In order to continue living, Simon gave Louis a stick so that he could walk around. Education has always been something crucial in their family, Louis' parents kept trying to ensure that Louis goes to school even though there were not any special schools for blind people back then.

Every day, Louis would go to school with the help of his friends who guided him to the class. He would learn by simply listening to the voice of his teachers. Time passes by until Louis met a priest that persuaded his parents to send him to the Royal Institute of Blind Youth.

Louis' application was accepted and with a heavy heart, his parent let him go to live in Paris which was quite far away especially when Louis was only 10 at the time. On February 1819, Louis start to learn in that school and lived in an old hostel.

But the good thing is that the way of learning here was much more convenient for someone who cannot see. His curiosity to learn was growing each day but books for an individual that is blind can be very difficult to obtain.

The type of books for the blind back then had letters embossed on the paper which will make the book thicker and heavier. The situation was bad in that one piece of paper can only fit one sentence.

This will make the reading process much longer and slower to understand.

Charles Barbier - An Ex-Soldier

A visit from an ex-veteran called Charles Barbier was the most important moment of Louis' life. Charles told the institute how the technique of writing he created allowed soldiers to read at night without any help from light or sound that can alert the enemy.

By using a special tool, Charles will carve circles and symbols onto a thick paper to construct sentences in a system known as night writing. However, there were definite drawbacks when employing this technique.

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So, Charles went to the Royal Institute of Blind Youth to share his ideas since he saw an opportunity to test them on blind individuals. His idea was taught to the students there and Louis saw the benefits of this system for many people.

The space used to put the codes onto the paper is much smaller than printing out the letterings. This means that more sentences can be put into a piece of paper. For 3 years, Louis attempted to correct the night writing system by using the same tools his father used back home.

When he was 15 years old, Louis realized that the system he designed can make him read much faster. He only used 6 circles that are aligned in two columns. He placed every code on each pattern that can be incorporated. With his system, he managed to create 64 codes.

Every pattern is matched to one symbol whether it is a letter, number or punctuation.

The First Trial Of Using The Louis Braille System

Before the system was allowed to be used on other students, Louis requested to present his creation to the director of the Institute where he studied. The director read a few sentences from an article and Louis wrote down the sentences as he listened.

The director then asked Louis to read out everything that he just said. The result is that everything was written correctly as stated and the system that Louis created was a huge success.

Excited as he is, the students of the Royal Institute of Blind Youth were taught using Louis' system and they found out that this system was far much easier to comprehend. In fact, they could easily jot down everything that has been learned similar to what Louis did.

Thanks to Louis' capability, he was appointed the teacher's helper to teach all the students in the institute. His ambition did not stop there since he wanted all blind individuals to read just like him.

Through the institute, Louis made an application to the French government to make his system the official reading and writing system for all blind people. Unfortunately, he did not receive any response from them.

Louis gathered his research and creation and published a book called, 'Method of Writing Methods, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them'. On top of his passion for music, he hoped that more books will be published using his system.

In 1839, Louis expanded the use of his system and introduced decapoint system where the sentences are written by blind individuals that looks similar to roman letters. This will allow those who can see, and read this type of writing.

Louis' friend, Pierre Victor Foucault, worked with Louis to develop a typing machine called raphigrapher to ease blind individuals to type using the decapoint system.

Final Hurdle

The system developed by Louis went through many obstacles at his own institute. After the death of the director that supported his work, a new director was appointed called Pierre Armand Dufau that ban the use of the Louis system at the institute.

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Louis' health kept depleting due to tuberculosis which made his life much harder to work. When he was 40 years old in 1849, he decided to announce his retirement. But at the time, the ban on his system was still in effect.

It was only in 1854, the Royal Institute of Blind Youth withdrew the ban and allowed Louis' creation to be used all over France. To his surprise, it blew up and since then gained popularity all over.

The raphigrapher machine he developed was displayed at the World's Fair event and words went out about the great innovation of Louis Braille. It was rather pitiful for Louis as he passed away 2 years earlier before witnessing his hard work being accepted by everyone.

He died after fighting with his condition for so many years on 6 January 1852 which was 2 days after his 43rd birthday. The French government started to recognize his work and named the system after Braille. But it took some time before the Braille system was used by other countries around the world.

It was in 1873 that European countries started to use the Braille system and it expanded across the globe. The United States recognized the Braille system in 1916 and the Braille code for English was finalized in 1932.

Due to the great contribution of Louis Braille, his ashes were spread in two places, his hometown, Courvray, and his home which became a museum and the respected Pantheon grave in Paris to commemorate Louis' works.

The Braille system created by him is still being utilized to this day and became the official format for blind individuals to read.

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