Most importantly, braille gives blind individuals access to a wide range of reading materials including recreational and educational reading, financial statements and restaurant menus. Equally important are contracts, regulations, insurance policies, directories, and cookbooks that are all part of daily adult life. Through braille, people who are blind can also pursue hobbies and cultural enrichment with materials such as music scores, hymnals, playing cards, and board games. Various other methods had been attempted over the years to enable reading for the blind.
However, many of them were raised versions of print letters. It is generally accepted that the braille system has succeeded because it is based on a rational sequence of signs devised for the fingertips, rather than imitating signs devised for the eyes. The history of braille goes all the way back to the early s. As a military veteran, Barbier saw several soldiers killed because they used lamps after dark to read combat messages.
As a result of the light shining from the lamps, enemy combatants knew where the French soldiers were and inevitably led to the loss of many men. Each dot or combination of dots within the cell represented a letter or a phonetic sound. The problem with the military code was that the human fingertip could not feel all the dots with one touch.
Louis Braille was born in the village of Coupvray, France on January 4, One year earlier he was enrolled at the National Institute of the Blind in Paris. He spent the better part of the next nine years developing and refining the system of raised dots that has come to be known by his name, Braille. This crucial improvement meant that a fingertip could encompass the entire cell unit with one impression and move rapidly from one cell to the next.
Over time, braille gradually came to be accepted throughout the world as the fundamental form of written communication for blind individuals. Today it remains basically as he invented it. Many ended up becoming beggars. The story so far: At age 3, Louis Braille became blind after playing with a tool in his father's harness shop.
Braille carved a small wooden cane for Louis to help the boy feel things that were ahead of him when he walked. When Louis was 6, a new priest came to town. The priest gave Louis lessons for a year, but Louis wanted to go to the village school with the other children. So a classmate agreed to pick him up each morning and lead him to school. Louis listened to the teacher and memorized what he heard. Even though he couldn't read or write, he was the best student in the class.
He studied there for three years. At times Louis was frustrated because he could not read or write. The priest and the principal thought Louis would do better in a school for blind students. It was in Paris, 25 miles away. Louis' parents were reluctant to let him go away from home.
He was only 10 and the school was very expensive. The priest persuaded his parents to apply. The school accepted Louis and even paid for him to go to class and live there.
The school was in a rundown old building. It was damp and dark, and the students were given very little food. After his classes, Louis learned to play the cello and the piano.
He couldn't read music, but he memorized the notes. Louis was looking forward to learning to read. Unfortunately, there were very few books available for blind students. They were printed on heavy, waxed paper. The letters were formed by pressing the paper onto pieces of lead that were shaped like the letters of the alphabet. This process was called embossing.
The books were very heavy. One sentence could take up a whole page. Louis learned to run his fingers over the pages so that he could feel each letter. It took a long time to read this way. By the time he got to the end of a sentence, he would forget the words at the beginning. The story so far: Louis Braille studied at a school for blind students where the few books made for the blind were heavy and hard to read.
He had invented a way for soldiers to send messages to each other at night without needing light or having to talk.
If they had to use light or make noise, the enemy could spot the soldiers and shoot at them. With a pointed tool, the captain punched dots and dashes into heavy paper. The dots and dashes represented different sounds. These marks were combined to form words and could be read without light or sound. But the soldiers found it too difficult to use. The captain thought blind students might be able to use it instead.
The students tried to read some of the messages but they also found the system complicated to learn and difficult to use. Many dots were required to represent a single word. Still, it took up less space than the existing process of embossing actual letters from the alphabet. Louis was excited about this new way to read. He spent most of his free time learning the system. He knew it would have to be made simpler. He also had to find a way to include numbers and punctuation.
So in his spare time and late at night, Louis worked hard to improve the captain's system. With a pointed instrument called a stylus and a wooden writing board with paper, Louis continued working on it. After two years of work, when Louis was 15, he finally created a new code. It was easier to learn and quicker to read. Louis brought it to the new director of the Royal Institute. To test the code, the director read a newspaper article aloud.
Louis punched the stylus into the paper to write down what the director said. When the director finished, Louis ran his fingers over the raised dots and repeated back the exact words read by the director. The director was very impressed.
The story so far: Louis Braille spent his spare time at his school for the blind trying to improve on a night writing system so blind students could learn to read and write.
Louis' classmates at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth tried out his new alphabet system. They were delighted to find how well it worked. Now they could take notes in class. Memorizing long class lectures wasn't necessary any more. They didn't need anyone's help to read or write. Louis was very happy that his classmates liked his new code, but he wanted other blind people to be able to use it too.
The school director wrote to the French government and asked if Louis' dot alphabet could be made the official system of writing for the blind. In the meantime, Louis became an assistant teacher at the institute. His classes were very popular. He also spent a lot of time copying books into his code. He even added symbols so that blind musicians could read and write music. He eventually had a book published describing his new code. Louis also learned to play the organ.
He played so well, he worked as an organist at a nearby church. He soon became a full-time teacher at the institute. In , Louis demonstrated his dot alphabet at the Exhibition of Industry held in Paris. All sorts of inventions were shown there.
He took notes as people spoke and then read back what was said. The French king was at the exhibition and saw Louis' invention, but he didn't make it the official language for the blind.
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