Louis Braille (; ; 4 January 1809 – 6 January 1852) was a French educator and the inventor of a reading and writing system, named
braille
Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille disp ...
after him, intended for use by
visually impaired
Visual impairment, also known as vision impairment, is a medical definition primarily measured based on an individual's better eye visual acuity; in the absence of treatment such as correctable eyewear, assistive devices, and medical treatment†...
people. His system is used worldwide and remains virtually unchanged to this day.
Braille was blinded at the age of three in one eye as a result of an accident with a
stitching awl
A stitching awl is a tool with which holes can be punctured in a variety of materials, or existing holes can be enlarged. It is also used for sewing heavy materials, such as leather or canvas. It is a thin, tapered metal shaft, coming to a shar ...
in his father's
harness making shop. Consequently, an infection set in and spread to both eyes, resulting in total blindness. At that time there were not many resources in place for the blind, but he nevertheless excelled in his education and received a scholarship to France's
Royal Institute for Blind Youth. While still a student there, he began developing a system of
tactile
Tactile may refer to:
* Tactile, related to the sense of touch
* Haptics (disambiguation)
* Tactile (device), a text-to-braille translation device
See also
* Tangibility, in law
* Somatosensory system, where sensations are processed
* CD96
CD ...
code that could allow blind people to read and write quickly and efficiently. Inspired by a system invented by
Charles Barbier
Charles Barbier de la Serre (18 May 1767 – 22 April 1841) was the inventor of several forms of shorthand and alternative means of writing, one of which became the inspiration for Braille.
Barbier was born in Valenciennes and served in the Fren ...
, Braille's new method was more compact and lent itself to a range of uses, including music. He presented his work to his peers for the first time in 1824.
In adulthood, Braille served as a professor at the Institute and had an
avocation
An avocation is an activity that someone engages in as a hobby outside their main occupation. There are many examples of people whose professions were the ways that they made their livings, but for whom their activities outside their workplaces ...
as a musician, but he largely spent the remainder of his life refining and extending his system. It went unused by most educators for many years after his death, but posterity has recognized braille as a revolutionary invention, and it has been adapted for use in languages worldwide.
Early life
![Braille house04](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Braille_house04.JPG)
Louis Braille was born in
Coupvray
Coupvray () is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the ÃŽle-de-France region in north-central France.
People
Coupvray was the birthplace and home of Louis Braille. Braille's home is now a museum. Braille's hands are buried in Coupvray ...
, a small town about twenty miles east of Paris, on 4 January 1809. He and his three elder siblings – Monique Catherine (b. 1793), Louis-Simon (b. 1795), and Marie Céline (b. 1797) – lived with their parents, Simon-René and Monique, on three
hectares
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
of land and
vineyard
A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineya ...
in the
countryside
In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are descri ...
. Simon-René maintained a successful
enterprise
Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to:
Business and economics
Brands and enterprises
* Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company
* Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company
* Enterpris ...
as a
leatherer and maker of
horse tack
Tack is equipment or accessories equipped on horses and other equines in the course of their use as domesticated animals. This equipment includes such items as saddles, stirrups, bridles, halters, reins, bits, and harnesses. Equipping a hors ...
.
[Weygand, p. 282.][Kugelmass (1951), pp. 13–23.]
As soon as he could walk, Braille's time was spent playing in his father's workshop. At the age of three, the child was playing with some of the tools, trying to make holes in a piece of leather with an
awl.
Squinting
Squinting is the action of looking at something with partially closed eyes.
Squinting is most often practiced by people who suffer from refractive errors of the eye who either do not have or are not using their glasses. Squinting helps momentari ...
closely at the surface, he pressed down hard to drive the point in, and the awl glanced across the tough leather and
stabbed him in one of his eyes. A local
physician
A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...
bound and patched the affected eye and even arranged for Braille to be met the next day in Paris by a
surgeon, but no treatment could save the damaged organ. In agony, the young boy suffered for weeks as the wound became severely infected. He eventually lost sight in the other eye, likely due to
sympathetic ophthalmia
Sympathetic ophthalmia (SO), also called spared eye injury, is a diffuse granulomatous inflammation of the uveal layer of both eyes following trauma to one eye. It can leave the affected person completely blind. Symptoms may develop from days to s ...
.
Louis Braille survived the torment of the infection but by the age of five he was completely blind in both eyes.
Due to his young age, Braille did not realize at first that he had lost his sight, and often asked why it was always dark. His parents made many efforts – quite uncommon for the era – to raise their youngest child in a normal fashion, and he prospered in their care. He learned to navigate the village and country paths with canes his father
hewed for him, and he grew up seemingly at peace with his disability.
Braille's bright and creative mind impressed the local teachers and
priests, and he was accommodated with higher education.
Blind education
Braille studied in Coupvray until the age of ten. Because of his intelligence and diligence, Braille was permitted to attend one of the first schools for blind children in the world, the Royal Institute for Blind Youth,
since renamed to the
National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris.
[Farrell, p. 98.] The last of his family's children to leave the household, Braille departed for the school in February 1819. At that time the Royal Institute was an underfunded, ramshackle affair, but it provided a relatively stable environment for blind children to learn and associate together.
Haüy system
The children were taught to read using a system devised by the school's founder,
Valentin Haüy. Not blind himself, Haüy was a philanthropist who devoted his life to helping the blind. He designed and manufactured a small library of books for the children by
embossing heavy paper with the raised imprints of
Latin letters
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Ital ...
. Readers would trace their fingers over the text, comprehending slowly but in a traditional fashion which Haüy could appreciate.
[Kugelmass (1951), pp. 37–38.]
![Braille house07](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Braille_house07.JPG)
Braille was helped by Haüy's books, but he also despaired over their lack of depth: the amount of information retained in such books was necessarily minor. Because the raised letters were made in a complex artisanal process using wet paper pressed against copper wire, the children could not hope to "write" by themselves. So that the young Louis could send letters back home, Simon-René provided him with an alphabet made from bits of thick leather. It was a slow and cumbersome process, but the boy could at least trace the letters' outlines and write his first sentences.
The handcrafted Haüy books all came in uncomfortable sizes and weights for children. They were laboriously constructed, very fragile, and expensive to obtain: when Haüy's school first opened, it had a total of three books.
[ Nonetheless, Haüy promoted their use with zeal. To him, the books presented a system which would be readily approved by educators and indeed they seemed – to the sighted – to offer the best achievable results. Braille and his schoolmates, however, could detect all too well the books' crushing limitations.][ Nonetheless, Haüy's efforts still provided a breakthrough achievement – the recognition of the ]sense of touch
In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch ( haptic perception), as well as temperature ( thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It ...
as a workable strategy for sightless reading. The Haüy system's main drawback was that it was "talking to the fingers with the language of the eye".[Farrell, p. 96.]
Teacher and musician
Braille read Haüy's books repeatedly, and he was equally attentive to the oral instruction offered by the school. He proved to be a highly proficient student and, after he had exhausted the school's curriculum, he was immediately asked to remain as a teacher's aide. By 1833, he was elevated to a full professorship. For much of the rest of his life, Braille stayed at the Institute where he taught history, geometry, and algebra.[Olmstrom, pp. 161–162.]
Braille's ear for music enabled him to become an accomplished cellist and organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ. An organist may play solo organ works, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumental soloists. In addition, an organist may accompany congregational h ...
in classes taught by Jean-Nicolas Marrigues. Later in life, his musical talents led him to play the organ for churches all over France. A devout Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, Braille held the position of organist in Paris at the Church of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs from 1834 to 1839, and later at the Church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.
Braille system
Braille was determined to invent a system of reading and writing that could bridge the gap in communication between the sighted and the blind. In his own words: "Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we he blindare not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals – and communication is the way this can be brought about."[
]
Origins
In 1821, Braille learned of a communication system devised by Charles Barbier
Charles Barbier de la Serre (18 May 1767 – 22 April 1841) was the inventor of several forms of shorthand and alternative means of writing, one of which became the inspiration for Braille.
Barbier was born in Valenciennes and served in the Fren ...
. Barbier, aware of its potential for helping the blind to read and write, wrote to the school to introduce his method. Barbier's invention was a code of up to twelve dots in two columns, impressed into thick paper. These impressions could be interpreted entirely by the fingers. Barbier's code of raised dots inspired Braille to develop a system of his own.
Design
Braille worked tirelessly on his ideas, and his system was largely completed by 1824, when he was fifteen years old.[ He innovated on Barbier's system by simplifying its form and maximizing its efficiency. He made uniform columns for each letter, and he reduced the twelve raised dots to six. His first version used both dots and dashes. He published this version in 1829, but by the second edition in 1837 discarded the dashes because they were too difficult to read. Crucially, Braille's smaller cells were capable of being recognized as letters with a single touch of a finger.][
Braille created his own raised-dot system using Barbier's ]slate and stylus
The slate and stylus are tools used by blind people to write text that they can read without assistance.Alpha Chi Omega (1908) Invented by Charles Barbier as the tool for writing letters that could be read by touch, the slate and stylus allow fo ...
tools. Barbier had donated many sets of these tools to the school. By soldering two metal strips across the slate, he created a secure area for the stylus which would keep the lines straight and readable.[
By these modest means, Braille constructed a robust communication system. "It bears the stamp of genius" wrote Dr. Richard Slating French, former director of the California School for the Blind, "like the Roman alphabet itself".
]
Musical adaptation
The system was soon extended to include braille musical notation. Passionate about his own music, Braille took meticulous care in its planning to ensure that the musical code would be "flexible enough to meet the unique requirements of any instrument". In 1829, he published the first book about his system, ''Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them''. Ironically this book was first printed by the raised letter method of the Haüy system.[
]
Publications
Braille produced several written works about braille and as general education for the blind. ''Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs...'' (1829) was revised and republished in 1837; his mathematics guide, ''Little Synopsis of Arithmetic for Beginners'', entered use in 1838;[ and his monograph ''New Method for Representing by Dots the Form of Letters, Maps, Geometric Figures, Musical Symbols, etc., for Use by the Blind'' was first published in 1839. Many of Braille's original printed works remain available at the Braille birthplace museum in Coupvray.
]
Decapoint
''New Method for Representing by Dots...'' (1839) put forth Braille's plan for a new writing system with which blind people could write letters that could be read by sighted people. Called decapoint
Decapoint, or ''raphigraphy'', was a tactile form of the Latin script invented by Louis Braille as a system that could be used by both the blind and sighted. It was published in 1839. Letters retained their linear form, and so were legible witho ...
, the system combined his method of dot-punching with a new specialized grill which Braille devised to overlay the paper. When used with an associated number table (also designed by Braille and requiring memorization), the grill could permit a blind writer to faithfully reproduce the standard alphabet.
After the introduction of decapoint, Braille gave assistance to his friend Pierre-François-Victor Foucault, who was working on the development of his Raphigraphe, a device that could emboss letters in the manner of a typewriter. Foucault's machine was hailed as a great success and was exhibited at the World's Fair
A world's fair, also known as a universal exhibition or an expo, is a large international exhibition designed to showcase the achievements of nations. These exhibitions vary in character and are held in different parts of the world at a specif ...
in Paris in 1855.
Later life
Although Braille was admired and respected by his pupils, his writing system was not taught at the institute during his lifetime. The successors of Valentin Haüy, who had died in 1822, showed no interest in altering the established methods of the school,[ and indeed, they were actively hostile to its use. Dr. Alexandre René Pignier, headmaster at the school, was dismissed from his post after he had a history book translated into braille.
Braille had always been a sickly child, and his condition worsened in adulthood. A persistent respiratory illness, long believed to be ]tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
, dogged him. Despite the lack of a cure at the time, Braille lived with the illness for 16 years. By the age of 40, he was forced to relinquish his position as a teacher. When his condition reached mortal danger, he was admitted to the infirmary at the Royal Institution, where he died in 1852, two days after he had reached the age of 43.[Weygand, p. 289.]
Legacy
Because of the overwhelming insistence of the blind pupils, Braille's system was finally adopted by the Institute in 1854, two years after his death.[Farrell, p. 99.] The system spread throughout the French-speaking world, but was slower to expand in other places. However, by the time of the first all-European conference of teachers of the blind in 1873, the cause of braille was championed by Dr. Thomas Rhodes Armitage
Thomas Rhodes Armitage (2 April 1824 – 23 October 1890) was a British physician, and founder of the Royal National Institute of Blind People.
He was born at Tilgate in Sussex into a family of wealthy Yorkshire industrialists, the son of J ...
and thereafter its international use increased rapidly. By 1882, Dr. Armitage was able to report that "There is now probably no institution in the civilized world where braille is not used except in some of those in North America." Eventually even these holdouts relented: braille was officially adopted by schools for the blind in the United States in 1916, and a universal braille code for English was formalized in 1932.[Reynolds, p. 318.]
New variations in braille technology continue to grow, including such innovations as braille computer terminals; RoboBraille email delivery service; and Nemeth Braille
The Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics is a Braille code for encoding mathematical and scientific notation linearly using standard six-dot Braille cells for tactile reading by the visually impaired. The code was developed by Abraham Nemeth. Th ...
, a comprehensive system for mathematical and scientific notation. Almost two centuries after its invention, braille remains a system of powerful and enduring utility.
Honors and tributes
The immense personal legacy of Louis Braille was described in a 1952 essay by T.S. Eliot:
Braille's childhood home in Coupvray is a listed historic building and houses the Louis Braille Museum.[ A large monument to him was erected in the town square which was itself renamed Braille Square. On the centenary of his death, his remains were moved to the ]Panthéon
The Panthéon (, from the Classical Greek word , , ' empleto all the gods') is a monument in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It stands in the Latin Quarter, atop the , in the centre of the , which was named after it. The edifice was b ...
in Paris. In a symbolic gesture, Braille's hands were left in Coupvray, reverently buried near his home.
Statues and other memorials to Louis Braille can be found around the world. He has been commemorated in postage stamps worldwide, and the asteroid 9969 Braille
9969 Braille, provisional designation , is an eccentric, rare-type and elongated asteroid from the innermost regions of the asteroid belt, classified as Mars-crosser and slow rotator, approximately 1–2 kilometers in diameter. It was discovere ...
was named for him in 1992. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various t ...
'' lists him among the "100 Most Influential Inventors Of All Time".
A Google Doodle
A Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and notable historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running an ...
for Louis Braille's 197th birthday in 2006 was shown on Google's homepage, spelling "Google" in braille.
The 200th anniversary of Braille's birth in 2009 was celebrated throughout the world by exhibitions and symposiums about his life and achievements. Among the commemorations, Belgium and Italy struck 2-euro coins, India released a set of two commemorative coins (Rs 100 and Rs 2), and the USA struck a one dollar coin, all in Braille's honor.
World Braille Day is celebrated every year on Braille's birthday, January 4.
In popular culture
Because of his accomplishments as a young boy, Braille holds a special place as a hero for children, and he has been the subject of a large number of works of juvenile literature. Other appearances in the arts include the American TV special ''Young Heroes: Louis Braille'' (2010); the French TV movie ''Une lumière dans la nuit'' (2008) (released in English as ''The Secret of Braille''); and the dramatic play ''Braille: The Early Life of Louis Braille'' (1989) by Lola and Coleman Jennings. In music, Braille's life was subject of the song ''Merci, Louis'', composed by the Halifax singer-songwriter Terry Kelly, chair of the Canadian Braille Literacy Foundation. ''The Braille Legacy'', a musical which tells the story of Louis Braille, directed by Thom Southerland and starring Jérôme Pradon, debuted at the Charing Cross Theatre
The Charing Cross Theatre is a theatre under The Arches off Villiers Street below Charing Cross station. Founded in 1936, the venue occupied several premises in the West End of London before locating to its present site. The current site was o ...
in April 2017.
Notes
* It remains uncertain which eye was actually struck first. Most accounts of Braille's accident omit reference to left or right. Braille's American biographer J. Alvin Kugelmass wrote that it was the left eye, but C. Michael Mellor and Lennard Bickel state definitively that it was the right.
References
Bibliography
* (also large print
Large-print (also large-type or large-font) refers to the formatting of a book or other text document in which the typeface (or font) are considerably larger than usual to accommodate people who have low vision. Frequently the medium is also incre ...
)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Further reading
''La vie et l'oeuvre de Louis Braille: Inventeur de l'alphabet des aveugles (1809–1852)''
by Pierre Henri. Paris: Pr. universit. de France (1952).
External links
Louis Braille Online Museum – American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
* Original pages from
', 1829 edition, at the National Federation of the Blind
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) is an organization of blind people in the United States. It is the oldest and largest organization led by blind people in the United States. Its national headquarters are in Baltimore, Maryland.
Overvie ...
* Text of
New Method of Representing by Dots...
' (1839) at Archive.org
Valentin Haüy Association
{{DEFAULTSORT:Braille, Louis
19th-century French inventors
French Roman Catholics
1809 births
1852 deaths
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Blind people from France
Blind musicians
Braille
Creators of writing systems
Burials at the Panthéon, Paris
Tuberculosis deaths in France
French male organists