~ Louis Braille - Inventor of Braille ~

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Louis Braille - Inventor of Braille




Early Life

Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 in Coupvray, France, which was a small village. He died on January 6, 1852.  He was the inventor of braille, a system for blind or visually impaired people to be able to read and write.  With braille, a person has to pass his or her fingers over characters that are made of an arrangement of six embossed points.  This type of language has been adapted to nearly every known language in the world.

Louis Braille was not blind from birth.  Instead, he had his vision until he was three years old.  His father would make leather goods and harnesses that he sold to other villagers.  He often would use sharp tools that would allow him to punch holes and cut leather.  At the age of three, Louis Braille accidentally poked himself in his one eye using his father's stitching awl, which was one of his workshop tools.  The injury was not believed to be serious, but then it became infected.  He became blind in that eye, and then the other eye went blind too due to sympathetic opthalmic.



Despite his blindness, Louis wanted to read and wanted to learn.  He was attending regular school with his friends and was good in school, but he knew that his studies were limited in that school.  When Louis was only ten years old, he was able to attain a scholarship to the National Institute of the Blind located in Paris, France.  It was one of the first schools for the blind in the world.  Yet the conditions at the school were not great.  Louis often ate bread that was stale and water for meals.  On many occasions, the students would be abused or even locked up for punishments.

Braille was an intelligent and creative student.  He became a cellist and organist and was very talented with music.  He would play the organ for churches in many places in France.  In the school in France, Louis was taught the basic trades and craftsman skills.  He was also instructed on how to read by touching raised letters, which was a system of the founder of the school, Valentin Hazy.  Since the raised letters were made from paper that was pressed against copper wire, the students were never able to use this system to learn to write.  Additionally, another challenge was that the letters weighed a tremendous amount, and so whenever people published books with this type of communication, they would put together a book that had a number of stories in it in order to save money.  This meant that the books might weigh more than one hundred pounds.  As you can imagine, this made reading a challenge.  Louis's school had only fourteen books, and Louis had read all of them.



In 1821, Charles Barbier, a Captain from the French Army, came to Louis's school and shared "night writing," his invention that had a code of twelve raised dots and dashes that allowed soldiers to share secretive information without needing to speak.  The code was too challenging for Louis to follow, and when he designed his own system of Braille, he only use six raised dots, rather than twelve.

During this same year, Louis began to invent a raised dot system and used his father's stitching awl to do it, which is the same instrument that blinded him when he was only three years old.  He finished his system when he was fifteen years old.  His system used six dots that stood for letters.  This had a number of advantages of Barbier's system.  First, only one fingertip could understand all the dots at one time, which did not require a person to reposition his or her finger or move it to find the meaning of a letter.  The dots were in patterns, which simplified learning the system.  It also could be both read and written.



Later on, Louis expanded his system so that it included notation for both music and mathematics.  The very first book in Braille was published in the year 1829 with the title of Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged by Them.

Louis Braille became a teacher at the same institute that he was a student.  He was both admired and respected by his blind students, yet the system that he had created was not even taught at the institute while he was alive.  Braille died at only the age of 43 because he died of tuberculosis due to foul air at the institute.  His body was disinterred in 1952 and honored with re-internment in the Pantheon located in Paris, France.  In 1854, two years following his death, his system was finally recognized in France. 

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Louis Braille Galleries

Introduction

Celebrating the Bicentennial of Louis Braille's Birth

The Louis Braille Museum illustrates the life and legacy of the creator of the braille code—a system of raised dots representing letters, numbers, and punctuation which revolutionized the way blind people read and write.

Using photographs, engravings, and illustrations from books preserved in the American Foundation for the Blind's Archives and Rare Book Collection, the museum traces Louis Braille's life from his childhood in Coupvray, through his student years in Paris, to his invention of the braille code, and the recognition of its importance throughout the world.



Postcard with drawing by Jean Roblin. The postcard, viewed vertically, is in two main sections; the upper portion has a medallion containing the head and shoulders of Louis. Louis' eyes appear closed. Coat lapels and a button down waistcoat are visible. The dates 1809 and 1852 are written on either side of the bust and his name is written in the lower portion of the medallion.

In the middle of the postcard the words Louis Braille are written in braille.

At the bottom of the postcard, are the words Born in Coupvray. Seine and Marne (Ne a Coupvray. Seine et Marne). No date.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Coupvray: Louis' Childhood Home

Born in Coupvray

Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 in Coupvray, a small French village 25 miles east of Paris.

Louis was the fourth child of Simon-René Braille and Monique Baron. Simon-René was a master harness maker who was respected throughout the Coupvray region for his craftsmanship as a maker of high-quality leather goods for horses. His success as a craftsman helped Louis' father to purchase land, farm buildings, and a vineyard in Coupvray and to provide a comfortable life for his family.



Photograph of Louis Braille's home in Coupvray.  A dirt road separates Louis' very simple stone house on the left from another house (possibly also belonging to the Braille family) on the right hand side.  A marble plaque indicating that the house was occupied by Louis is on the side of the building facing the viewer and a wooden harness maker building sign is visible on the other side of the building.  A cat sits on the road.  No date.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Coupvray: Louis' Childhood Home

Accident in the Workshop

One day when Louis was 3 years old and was playing in his father's workshop, he picked up a sharp awl and tried to make a hole in a piece of leather as he had seen his father do many times. The young child lost control of the tool and stabbed himself in his right eye, crying out in pain. When his parents reached him, his eye was streaming blood. A local remedy of lily water was applied to the injury, probably aggravating the already badly inflamed eye. The infection spread quickly to Louis' left eye. Both eyes continued to deteriorate and by the time Louis was 5 years old he was completely blind.



Close up of the wooden sign on the side of Louis Braille's house. The sign reads "Braille Bourlier". Bourlier means harness maker. No date.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Coupvray: Louis' Childhood Home

An Independent Louis

Braille's parents were determined that Louis should be educated to become independent — a remarkable expectation at a time when many blind people in rural France lived by begging or peddling. Both Simon-René and Monique Braille could read and write and they recognized the importance of education for the intelligent child. Louis was taught to read and write by feeling nails hammered into boards in the shapes of letters. His father also carved a wooden cane for Louis so that he could learn to navigate his home and village without assistance.

Louis began his formal education in 1815 when he received private lessons from the new village priest, Abbé Palluy. The priest soon recognized that the young boy was fully capable of a normal education regardless of his lack of vision. The following year, Louis was admitted to the town school, where he received instruction side by side with his sighted peers. He quickly showed himself to be one of the brightest pupils in the school.



An American wooden box with nails hammered into the wood forming the word "Souvenir". Louis learned to read words by feeling nails in much the same way. No date.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Coupvray: Louis' Childhood Home

Louis' Education

Louis had to memorize what he learned when he received instruction from Abbé Palluy and the local school teacher, Antoine Becheret. In 1818, when he was 9 years old, Louis' schooling was disrupted by the government's introduction of a new method of teaching called "mutual instruction." The method was based on students instructing one another, thereby reducing the central role of the teacher in the classroom. Abbé Palluy strongly disliked the new method and searched for alternative educational options for Louis. He learned about a school in Paris dedicated to teaching children who were blind, and with the help of a local nobleman arranged for Louis to attend the school on scholarship. Louis' parents realized that he needed special instruction if he was to progress, and, after much soul-searching, they agreed to send him to the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris.



Postcard with drawing by Jean Roblin of the church in Coupvray. Text on the left-hand side reads "Eglise St. Pierre ou fut baptise L. Braille Le 6 Janvier 1809" [St. Pierre Church where L. Braille was baptized on January 6 1809]. No date.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Paris: Institute for Blind Youth

Valentin Haüy, the School's Founder

The school where Louis Braille was to spend the rest of his life — as both pupil and teacher — was called the Institute for Blind Youth. The Institute was the first school for blind children anywhere in the world. It was founded in 1786 by Valentin Haüy, a pioneer in the education of students who are blind. Haüy was born in 1745, and when he was in his twenties, he witnessed an incident where blind people were ridiculed and made fun. A clever and compassionate man, he became interested in education for those who were blind. He was particularly dedicated to developing a way to teach reading and writing. Through experimentation Haüy developed a revolutionary process for embossing books — books that had raised bumps in the form of letters.

In June 1784, Haüy asked a 17-year-old boy who was blind, named François Le Sueur, to study with him and offered to pay him as much as he was earning through begging. In only three months he taught François to read and write using embossed books. Over the next few years he was able to raise money to open a school, where the curriculum focused on academics, music, and manual skills.

In 1801, the Institute for Blind Youth was merged with another famous institute for blind people, and Haüy resigned.



Page from "Essay on the Education of Blind Children" [Essai Sur L'Education des Enfans-Aveugles](sic.) by Valentin Hauy, 1786.

The text is printed in a curling, decorative font. A horizontal rectangle towards the top of the page contains an abstract pattern of curls and shapes reminiscent of a garden maze.

The translation of the page is as follows:

Essay on the Education of Blind Children. Chapter 1. Aim of the Institute. Before providing an explanation of our Institute...

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Louis Braille Galleries

Paris: Institute for Blind Youth

Arrival at the Institute for Blind Youth

Louis Braille was only 10 when he traveled to Paris with his father on February 15, 1819, to enroll at the Institute for Blind Youth. Although a trip from Coupvray by stagecoach took only four hours, it was to be a life-changing journey for Louis. He was greeted kindly by Sébastien Guillié, the school's director.

Despite the sometimes harsh conditions of school life, Louis loved attending the Institute for Blind Youth. The school had been at its present location since 1816, and although the living conditions at this school were far better than at its previous location, it was filthy and damp. Students with no vision found it hard to walk about the poorly kept building, which was over 200 years old. The building had been used, among other things, as a prison during the French Revolution.

When Louis arrived at the school, there were 60 boys and 30 girls. He became friends early on with Gabriel Gauthier, who remained a close friend for the rest of his life. Louis particularly enjoyed weekly outings to the botanical gardens, when each child would hold onto a rope that kept the group together as the children walked through the city streets.



Engraving from "Essai sur L'Instruction Des Aveugles" [Essay on the Instruction of the Blind] by Sebastien Guillie, Paris, 1817. The image depicts the equipment used to teach reading and writing to blind students. On the top left-hand side is a board with eight horizontal grooves; one groove contains letters forming the word "dieu" (god). Below this board are enlarged examples of three wooden letter tiles. On the right-hand side is a slanted wooden table with compartments containing different letters.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Paris: Institute for Blind Youth

The School Curriculum

The school's director, Guillié, was one of only three teachers for ninety pupils at the Institute. All the teachers were sighted. Under Guillié's system, the brighter pupils instructed other students. Much of the work done by the students was through memorization, as it had been for Louis in Coupvray. The lessons included Greek, Latin, algebra, and French grammar. Students were also taught practical skills designed to help them find work, such as chair caning, making slippers, and basket making.

Louis was an excellent student. Between the ages of 11 and 16, he won prizes in several academic subjects as well as in the cello and piano. Louis' considerable musical talent flourished at the Institute, and he found work as an accomplished organist when he was older.



Engraving from "Essay on the Instruction of the Blind" [Essai sur L'Instruction Des Aveugles] by Sebastien Guille, Paris, 1817. The engraving depicts a seated man who is blind, playing a harp.

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Braille Invents His Code

Louis Perfects His System

In 1821, shortly after becoming the Institute's new director, Dr. Alexandre François-René Pignier invited Charles Barbier to address his students. Barbier was an artillery captain in the French Army who had devised a system for soldiers to communicate at night without a sound. His system combined 12 dots to represent sounds and he called it sonography. It is also referred to as "night writing." He believed his invention could be of great value to the blind.

Both students and teachers at the Institute were intrigued by the promise of sonography, and, despite the difficulty of the system, sonography was introduced in the school as an auxiliary teaching method. Louis and his classmates soon identified one of the chief flaws of Barbier's system in addition to its complexity: it was based on the 36 sounds of the French alphabet and did not lend itself to spelling or punctuation. Louis determined to take Barbier's system and improve upon it.

Between the ages of 13 and 16 Louis worked on perfecting an embossed dot system. Like Barbier's, Louis' system used raised dots, but beyond that similarity Louis' ideas were his own. For three years Louis spent his free time refining his code. On the weekends, evenings, and summer vacations in Coupvray, Louis could be found with paper, slate, and stylus diligently working.

When at age 15 he felt he had an adequate code, he shared it with Dr. Pignier, who had become his mentor. Louis' system, based on a six-dot cell, was both simple and elegant. A full braille cell consists of six raised dots arranged in two parallel rows, each having three dots. Sixty-four combinations are possible using one or more of these six dots. A single cell can be used to represent an alphabet letter, number, punctuation mark, or even a whole word.

Dr. Pignier encouraged the students at the Institute to use Louis' code. With it, they were able to achieve a level of literacy previously unavailable to them.



The Braille Alphabet with dot cells representing the letters A-Z, accented letters, common letter patterns and grammar from "The Braille Reference Book" by M. S. Loomis, 1942.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Braille Invents His Code

Louis Becomes a Teacher

When Louis was 19, Dr. Pignier hired him to be an apprentice teacher at the Institute at a salary of 180 francs per year. Louis taught several classes including algebra, grammar, and geometry, to both sighted and blind students. With the appointment to apprentice teacher, Louis moved out of a dormitory and was provided his own room.

In 1833 at the age of 24, Louis and two other blind friends including his best friend Gabriel Gauthier, were made full-fledged teachers. For his work Louis received a salary of 300 francs per year. After 1835, Louis only provided instruction to blind students. With his salary he was able to buy himself a piano, lend money to friends who were in need, and pay people to help write books using his code. In 1834, the Exposition of Industry was held in Paris, and Louis was permitted to exhibit his code and demonstrated it to attendees.



Engraving from "Essay on the Instruction of the Blind" [Essai sur L'Instruction Des Aveugles] by Sebastien Guillie, Paris, 1817. The engraving depicts a teacher who is standing behind a student who is blind and who is seated at a desk. The student holds a stylus as the teacher guides his hand.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Braille Invents His Code

Books in Braille

In 1829 the Institute published Louis' book, Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Songs by Means of Dots for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. In it, Louis explained how his code worked to produce letters, words, punctuation, capitalization, musical notes, and arithmetic symbols. The book was prepared using embossed type, but examples were provided in Louis' six-dot code.

In spite of poor health, Louis continued to make changes to his code, and in 1837 he produced a second edition of Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Songs by Means of Dots for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them, followed in 1838 by Little Synopsis of Arithmetic for Beginners. In this book he not only describes how to make materials for mathematics, but he also provides ideas on how to write a textbook using his code. He recognized the need for uniformity in the production of textbooks and other material for readers who were blind.

In 1837, the Institute for Blind Youth produced the first full-length book published in braille, A Brief History of France. A copy of the book, one of only three extant copies, is preserved in the Rare Book Collection of the American Foundation for the Blind and is illustrated here.



This image shows the predominantly brown leather spine of "A Brief History of France" [Precis Sur L'Histoire De France], the first full-length book produced using the braille dot system. The book measures 11 3/4 inches high by 9 1/4 inches wide by 4 5/8 inches deep. The book's title is embossed in gold on an area of red leather. The book was published by the National Institute for Blind Youth in 1837. This edition, housed at the headquarters of the American Foundation for the blind in New York City, is one of only three known copies in existence.

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Louis Braille Galleries

Braille Invents His Code

Louis Invents Decapoint

Louis' genius did not end with the six-dot braille system. By the late 1830s, he was working on a method whereby people who were blind could communicate efficiently and swiftly with sighted people. The system was called Decapoint.

Decapoint utilized a set of 100 dots on a 10 by 10 grid. Each letter was based on a dot configuration that could be looked up on a table Louis developed.

The illustration at left shows the letters "a-w" and their numeric dot-matrix equivalent. The dots in the decapoint alphabet replicate the shapes of letters; all letters have a minimum height of 4 dots, those letters that have longer stems such as p or d are accomodated by 3 dots either vertically above or below the 4 main dots. Using a board with heavy paper on it and a stylus, the user could trace the dot patterns to represent letters. The person writing went from right to left. After he or she finished, the writer would turn the paper over and read from left to right. The letters could be felt or seen with the eyes.

Louis' next task was to invent a machine that could tap out the dot formations. He sought assistance from Pierre-François-Victor Foucault, a mechanic and former pupil of the Insitute, to invent a machine to write decapoint without having to use a stylus to create every dot. The result was a machine called a raphigraphe (needle-writer). Foucault's machine was recognized with a platinum medal in 1843 by the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry.



Page from Louis Braille's book "New Procedure for representing by means of dots the precise shape of letters, geographical maps, geometrical shapes, musical notes, etc., for use by the blind". [Nouveau procede pour representer des points la forme meme des letters, les cartes de geographie, les figures de geometrie, les caracteres de musiques, etc., a l'usage des aveugles]. The book explains his system whereby people who are blind can write letters that can be read by sighted people. This page lists the letters a-w and their number matrix equivalent. 1839.

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Recognition of the Braille Code

Changing of the Guard

On May 7, 1840, Dr. Pignier was forced to retire from the position of director of the Institute and was succeeded by his former assistant, Pierre-Armand Dufau. Dufau did not approve of Louis Braille's code and banned its use by students and teachers at the Institute. It is said he did not like Louis' code because he was afraid that there would be no need for sighted teachers if everyone who was blind could read as a result of using braille.

In April 1843, Louis was forced by ill-health to convalesce for six months in Coupvray. When he returned to Paris he discovered that Dufau had burned 73 books produced by Guillié and Pignier using Haüy's embossing method. The director thought a different embossing system, in use in the United States and Scotland, was superior to Haüy's system. The method was called Boston Line Type, and eventually it was found to be less effective than Louis Braille's code.



First page of Sebastien Guillie's book "An Historical Explanation on Teaching Blind Youth" [Notice Historique sur L'Instruction des Jeunes Aveugles], 1819. This book used embossing techniques begun by Valentin Hauy.

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Recognition of the Braille Code

Braille's Code Demonstrated

Dufau's aversion to Braille's code and his prohibition on its use at the Institute were countered by Joseph Guadet, his assistant, who supported the braille code. Guadet convinced Dufau to see the benefits of using Louis' code. On February 22, 1844, the Institute celebrated its move to a new building. During the dedication ceremony Guadet demonstrated Louis Braille's code. First a 15-page book entitled Account of the System of Writing in Raised Dots Used for the Blind was read to those in attendance. This text acknowledged Louis' accomplishments and outlined the steps in the development of his code. Next a child was sent out of the room. Another child was asked to use Louis' code to write poetry dictated by a visitor attending the celebration. The first child was asked to come back in the room and read the poetry from the page the second child had created.

The day of the demonstration is often said to be the day Louis Braille's code, the braille code, was accepted by the world. In 1850, Dufau acknowledged Braille's invention in a second edition of his book, Concerning the Blind, which had made no mention of Braille's contribution in the original 1837 version.



Photograph of the exterior facade of the Institute for Blind Youth at 68 rue Saint-Victor in Paris. The building was constructed in 1843. Louis lived and taught here. A statue, seen here in the building's courtyard, is of the school's founder Valentin Hauy standing next to his seated pupil Francois Le Sueur. No date.