ON 204TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY: Louis Braille

THERE was a time, not long ago, when most people thought that blind people could never learn to read. People thought that the only way to read was to look at words with your eyes.

A French boy named Louis Braille thought otherwise. Blind from the age of three, Louis desperately wanted to read. He realised the vast world of thought and ideas that was locked out to him because of his disability. And he was determined to find the key to this door for himself, and for all other blind persons.

Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809, in Coupvray near Paris. His father made harnesses and other leather goods. His father often used sharp tools to cut and punch holes in the leather. One of the tools he used to make holes was a sharp awl — a tool that looks like a short pointed stick with a round, wooden handle. While playing with an awl, Louis’ hand slipped and he accidentally poked one of his eyes. At first the injury didn’t seem serious, but then the wound became infected. Louis lost sight in both eyes. The first few days after becoming blind were very hard.

Louis learned to adjust to the new life. He went to school and did well at his studies. He was both intelligent and creative. He wasn’t going to let his disability slow him down.

As he grew older, he realised that the small school he attended did not have the money and resources he needed. He heard of a school for the blind in Paris. He got admitted there. The school did have books for the blind to read. But these books had large letters that were raised up off the page. Since the letters were so big, the 14 books in total were large, bulky and costly.

Louis set about reading all the books in the library. He could feel each letter, but it took him time to read a sentence. It took a few seconds to reach each word and by the time he reached the end of a sentence, he almost forgot the beginning. He knew there must be a way for a blind to quickly feel the words on a page.

That day he set himself the goal of thinking up a system for blind people to read. He would try to think of some alphabet code to make his ‘finger reading’ as quick and easy as sighted reading.

Louis learned to play the cello and organ at a young age. He was so talented that he played at churches all over Paris. Indeed, music was his first love. It was also a steady source of income. Louis had great confidence in his creative abilities.

One day somebody at the school heard about an alphabet code that was being used by the French Army. This code was used to deliver messages at night from officers to soldiers. The messages could not be written on paper because the soldier would have to strike a match to read it. The light from the match would give the enemy a target at which to shoot. The alphabet code was made up of small dots and dashes. These symbols were raised up off the paper so that soldiers could read them by running their fingers over them. Once the soldiers understood the code, everything worked fine.

Louis got hold of this code and tried it out. It was much better than reading the gigantic books with gigantic raised letters. But the army code was still slow and cumbersome. The dashes took up a lot of space on a page. Each page could only hold one or two sentences. Louis knew that he could improve this alphabet in some way.

On his next vacation home, he would spend all his time working on finding a way to make this improvement. When he arrived home for school vacation, he was greeted warmly by his parents. His mother and father always encouraged him on his music and other school projects. Louis sat down to think about how he could improve the system of dots and dashes. He liked the idea of the raised dots, but could do without the raised dashes.

As he sat there in his father’s leather shop, he picked up one of the blunt awls. The idea came to him in a flash. The very tool which had caused him blindness could be used to make a raised dot alphabet that would enable him to read.

The first form of writing by means of dots is attributed to Charles Barbier, an artillery officer. He developed an interest in rapid, secret writing as it pertains to matters of war, where speed and secrecy are mandatory.

Barbier invented a method of “cutting out” writing with a pen knife. This method made it possible to scribe several copies at once. Barbier’s experience may have made him aware of the benefit to an officer able to write messages in the dark and decipher them with his fingers.

Louis was about 12 years old when Charles Barbier brought his writing system, called ‘sonography’ to the school. Louis saw the potential as well as the problems with the system. The Barbier system was based on a 12-dot cell and phonetic soundings.

Over the next three years, Louis worked on simplifying the system, which is how the 6-dot braille system came into being. He eventually evolved his new system to include notation for numbers and music.

The next few days he spent working on an alphabet made up entirely of six dots. The position of the different dots would represent the different letters of the alphabet.

Louis contracted tuberculosis at the age of 26. In early December 1851, Louis began to hemorrhage. This was attributed to a cold but got progressively worse. He died on January 6, 1852, at the age of 46.

To mark his death centenary in 1952, the French government moved Louis’ body to the Pantheon in Paris in recognition of his contribution to improving the quality of life of the visually impaired.