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.
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 from his father's workshop. This destroyed his left eye, which led to the infection of his right. Braille was completely blind by the age of four. Despite his handicap, Braille continued to attend school regularly until he was required to read and write.
At the age of ten, Braille earned a scholarship to the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institution for Blind Youths) in Paris. The scholarship was his ticket out of the usual fate for the blind, i.e. begging for money on the streets of Paris. However, the conditions in the school were not dissimilar. Braille was served stale bread and water, and students were beaten and locked up as punishment on various occasions.
At the school, the children were taught basic craftsman's skills and simple trades. They were also taught how to read by feeling raised letters (a system devised by 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. The braille system he developed offered numerous benefits over Valentin Haüy's raised letter method, the most notable being the ability to both read and write the language.
Braille later extended his system to include notation for mathematics and music, becoming professor at the royal institute before dying of tuberculosis at forty-three.
For a period after his death, the braille system went unnoticed. His significance was not identified until 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, the French state honoured his achievements by moving his remains from Coupvray to the Panthéon monument, Paris. Today, braille has been adapted to almost every major national language and is the primary system of written communication for visually impaired persons around the world.
Notes
^ To prevent confusion, the proper noun Braille, refering to the language, is written in lower case.