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Our story begins in 1812 in Paris, when
an accident in his father's leather shop caused 3-year-old Louis to
go blind. Louis' injury was originally thought to be not very
serious, but then the injured eye became infected and the infection
spread to his other eye. Before long, Louis was blind.
At age 10, Louis went to a school
for the blind in Paris. He was not satisfied with the books that the
school had for the blind students, though. They consisted of raised
lettering, but they literally spelled out every letter.
If a sighted person had to read one
letter at a time with his eyes, it would take a long time to read
anything, so you can imagine how long it would take a blind person
to "read" one letter at a time with his fingers. Louis knew there
must be a way to improve upon this alphabet.
This one's no great mystery -- the
hero of the story is Louis Braille, the inventor of the Braille
alphabet. What you might not know, however, is the story of how he
developed the Braille alphabet.
There were at least 20 types of
embossed alphabets available at the time, in the early 1800s. The
problem was that they were all developed by people with normal
vision but used by the blind. As a result, they were ineffective.
Louis' first inspiration was
probably his school's library books -- or actually the lack of
library books -- for the blind. After reading all 14 of them, he
knew there must be a way to increase the number of books written for
the blind.
In 1819, a French army officer named
Charles Barbier created the forerunner of the Braille alphabet. He
used his 12-dot system of raised lettering, called "night writing,"
to send messages to his soldiers at night.
Barbier's night writing system of
raised dots and dashes was similar to Morse code, although Morse
wouldn't be invented for another 25 years. Soldiers used this
alphabet so they could understand messages without having to light a
match, since a lit match would reveal their location to the enemy.
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Louis set out to improve upon
Barbier's system, and by 1824 the 15-year-old had created the
six-dot system of raised lettering that is used today. It was an
immediate hit with the other students at his school, even though it
was initially rejected by the school's teachers. Louis Braille later
became a teacher at this school -- the same school for the blind
that he attended.
When he died in 1852, it looked like
the Braille alphabet would die with him, but a group of four blind
men who founded the Royal National Institute of the Blind kept his
alphabet alive. The institute is now the largest publisher of
Braille in Europe.
How did Louis Braille "print" the
dots in the alphabet of raised lettering that bears his name?
The injury that caused Louis to go
blind at age 3 occurred when he slipped in his father's leather shop
and was poked in the eye by an awl. An awl is a tool with a very
sharp point at the end of it, and it is used to punch holes in
leather. When he developed his Braille alphabet, he used an awl to
poke the paper from underneath in order to create dots above the
paper.
Louis Braille used the object that
caused him to go blind to create a whole new alphabet, enabling
other blind people to read.
[Paul Niemann]
Paul Niemann is the author of Invention Mysteries. He can be
reached at niemann7@aol.com.
© Copyright Paul Niemann 2005
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