One day in 1812, in the commune of Coupvray, near Paris, France, Louis Braille was playing in his father’s workshop, which made harnesses for horses.
At the age of 3, it was not uncommon for him to be attracted to woodworking tools and, imitating what he had seen, he picked up one of the sharpest ones to “play daddy”.
Maybe it wasn’t the first time he’d done it, and he’d probably been told not to – but at this age, you don’t measure the consequences.
And on this occasion, an accident happened that would forever change his life and, a few years later, that of many other people.
As he tried to make a hole in the leather, the awl slipped out of his hands and pierced his eye.
The eye became infected, and the infection not only progressed, but also spread to the other eye.
At age 5, Louis Braille was completely blind.
Although the local school did not offer any special programs for the visually impaired, his parents were clear that they should not deny him the opportunity to study. They enrolled him then, and at age 7, Braille started going to school.
As most of the teaching was done orally, he turned out to be an apt student. But, not knowing how to read or write, he was always at a disadvantage.
Finally, the best thing that could happen happened: he won a scholarship to study at the National Institute for Blind Youth (RIJC) in Paris.
heading to paris
Braille arrived in the French capital and the RIJC when he was 10 years old.
At that time, the reading system used even at the institute was very basic: the few books they had were printed with raised letters, a system invented by the school’s founder, Valentin Haüy.
This meant that students had to run their fingers over each letter slowly from beginning to end to form words and, after much effort, sentences.
In 1821, Charles Barbier, captain of the French army, came to the institute to share a tactile reading system developed so that soldiers could read messages on the battlefield in darkness without alerting the enemy with flashlights.
He realized that his “night writing,” as he called it, could benefit the blind.
Dots and lines instead of letters
Instead of using raised printed letters, night writing used raised dots and dashes.
Students experimented but soon lost interest as the system not only did not include capital letters or punctuation, but words were spelled as they were pronounced rather than in standard French spelling.
Louis Braille, however, persisted.
It took the code as a base and perfected it.
Three years later, when he was 15, he had completed his new system.
The changes
The first version of his new writing system was published in 1829.
What he did was simplify Barbier’s system by reducing the raised dots.
The idea was that they were just the right size to feel them with your fingertip with a single touch.
To create the raised dots on the sheet of paper, he used an awl, the same sharp tool that had caused his blindness.
And to ensure the lines were straight and legible, he used a flat grid.
As Braille loved music, he also invented a system for writing notes.
The time has passed…
The medical world was very conservative and was slow to embrace the Braille innovation.
So much so that he died 2 years before they finally started teaching his system at the institute where he had studied.
He died of tuberculosis at age 43.
Over time, the system began to be used throughout the French-speaking world. By 1882, it was already in use in Europe. In 1916, it reached North America and then the rest of the world.
An adaptable system
The braille system has changed the lives of many blind people around the world.
It reads from left to right like other European scripts, and it’s not a language: it’s a writing system, which means it can be adapted to different languages.
Braille codes were also developed for mathematical and scientific formulas.
However, with the advent of new technologies, including computer screen readers, literacy rates in this system are decreasing.
posthumous tribute
In 1952, in honor of his legacy, Louis Braille’s remains were unearthed and transferred to the Pantheon in Paris, where the tombs of some of France’s most celebrated intellectual leaders are located.
However, Coupvray, his homeland, insisted on keeping his hands, which are buried in a simple urn in the churchyard.
NASA, the American space agency, in turn gave the name “9969 Braille” to a rare type of asteroid, an eternal tribute to a great human being.
*This article is based on the video “The incredible story of the boy who invented Braille” (“The Incredible Story of the Boy Who Invented Braille”), from BBC Ideas. You can watch the video here (in English).
