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Louis Braille(1809-1852) Have you ever seen on the elevator those little bumps by the floor buttons? Well those bumps are the way blind people read and write. A brilliant man named Louis Braille invented these dots. He is famous for making an easy way for blind people to read.
Braille lived in Coupvray, France. He was born on June 4th, 1809. Louis was not blind when he was first born. At three years old was when he became blind. Louis was in his father's workshop, playing with his tools. Accidentally, he poked himself in the left eye with a very sharp knife. The infection spread to the right eye so he became completely blind. The only way to find his way around was by sound and feeling.
No one liked him or wanted to be his friend. They thought he was an idiot. He was lonely and confused. When he got older, he still couldn't go to school because there were no blind schools in Coupvray.
He did have two teachers named Jacques Palluy and Antoine Becheret that were good teachers and also friends. Their kindness and concern helped change life for the blind, and also people's attitude about the blind. In 1818, the tutors suggested that Louis go to the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, France.
In February 1819, Braille was off to the institute. He got very smart over the next few years. At the school, the students read words invented by Charles Barbier. This style of reading used dashes and dots and was very difficult to read. The dashes and dots were punched into paper tape. This method was called "Night Writing." One letter had up to fourteen dashes and dots.
Louis had always wanted to improve "Night Writing" by making it easier to read. So he started to create his own style of writing. Instead of dashes, he used holes. Up to only six holes were in each letter. Also the holes were raised instead of punched. The students at the school loved this idea of reading but the governor didn't. So they kept "Night Writing." The students weren't very happy with this idea.
Louis graduated from school and became a teacher. He was a very good teacher. But when he was twenty-six years old, he came down with a disease called tuberculosis which got in the way of his teaching. At the age of forty-three in 1852, Louis Braille died of tuberculosis.
Just six months later, Braille became the official reading and writing method of the National Institute for Blind Youth. Eight years after his death, the Braille language came to the United States. And in 1860 Braille was finally respected and almost everyone used it. Now over 600,000 books and magazines are printed every year in Braille.
This is a great example of not focusing on the dis, but the ability. How can a person with a disability have a huge ability? Louis Braille demonstrated this with imagination, and lots of courage.
Here is the Braille alphabet and punctuation. Now you can read those little bumps by the floor buttons!
