Back to Site Map Back to Braille                Louis Braille

Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809, in the small hillside village of Coupvray near Paris, France. His father was a saddle maker by the name of Simon-Rene Braille.  His mother’s name was Monique Baron-Braille.  Louis had 3 older siblings.  Louis loved to play with his fathers discarded pieces of leather.  When Louis was three he accidentally cut his eye with one of his father’s sharp tools.  Once the blood had been cleared away and the eye had been bandaged, Louis was taken to a healer and then a doctor. But the eye could not be saved.  The eye became infected.  The infection grew so bad that the other eye became infected as well and Louise Braille was blinded for life.  In 1819 Louis was sent to Paris to study at the National Institute for blind children.  In 1821 Louis Braille was taught sonography a code of raised dots and dashes.  Louis Braille was exited because he could read.  But he found many flaws.  So Louis decided to fix the mistakes by correcting the sonography’ mistakes and named the new code Braille.