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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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