How it began
Louis Braille was born in 1809 in Coupvray, east of Paris, and was blinded in early childhood after an accident with an awl in his father's harness workshop. At age 10 he received a scholarship to the institute for blind youth in Paris. There he encountered a tactile code created by the French army officer Charles Barbier. Between the ages of 12 and 15 he studied and simplified it, and by 1824, at age 15, he had largely completed his own system.
Before it existed
Pupils at the institute learned to read through the slow process of tracing large raised print letters and numbers. Barbier's system, known as night writing, was made for soldiers to communicate on the battlefield in the dark. It used combinations of 12 raised dots to represent symbols.
How it works
Braille reduced the code to a cell of six dots, in two vertical columns of three, small enough to be felt with a single fingertip. Different combinations of dots stand for different letters and punctuation marks, giving 64 symbols in all. Braille wrote by punching dots into paper with an awl. He later extended the system to musical notation.
Who pushed back
The institute's director supported the system, but a new director banned it in 1840, fearing that sighted teachers would no longer be needed if blind people could read on their own. Braille went unused by most educators for many years after its inventor's death in 1852. At age 20 Braille published the first braille book, a method for writing words, music, and plainsong by means of dots. He became a teacher at the same institute and spent much of his life refining and extending the system.
Where it stands today
Braille has been adapted for languages worldwide and is used for letters, symbols, numbers, mathematics, and music, all with the six-dot combinations. The system remains virtually unchanged. Braille's childhood home in Coupvray is now a museum. Posterity has recognized it as a revolutionary invention.
