Louis Braille
Louis Braille was a son of farmer as well as a leather worker who lost his both eyes by an accident at his early age. Braille had mastered his disability while still a boy. He attended Hauy’s school in 1819 and excelled in his education and won scholarship from France’s Royal Institute for Blind Youth. Later he taught there. While still a student there, he began developing a system of tactile code that could allow blind people to read and write quickly and efficiently. He soon became determined to fashion a system of reading and writing that could bridge the critical gap in communication between the sighted and the blind.
In 1821, Braille learned of a communication system devised by captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. Barbier’s “Night Writing”, was a code of dots and dashes impressed into thick paper. These impressions could be interpreted entirely by the fingers, letting soldiers share information on the battle field without having light or needing to speak.
The captain’s code turned out to be too complex to use in its original military form, but it inspired Braille to develop a system of his own. Braille worked tirelessly on his ideas, and his system was largely completed by 1824, when he was just fifteen years of age. From Barbier’s “Night Writing”, he innovated by simplifying its form and maximising its efficiency. He made uniform column for each letter, and he reduced the twelve raised dots to six. He published his system in 1829, and by the second edition in 1837 had discarded the dashes because they are too difficulty to read. Crucially, Braille’s smaller cells were capable of being recognised as letters with a simple touch of a finger. This unique discovery of script for the blind filled happiness in the lives of millions.
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