Braille was invented by a Frenchman, Louis Braille, in about 1829. It is an alphabet consisting of an arrangement of raised dots, which can be read by blind people using their sense of touch. While Braille was cutting some leather in his father’s shop at the age of three, a knife slipped and plunged into an eye causing blindness.
In 1819, when he was 10 years old, the boy went to Paris with a scholarship to study at the National Institution for Blind Children. The institution’s founder hit on the idea of providing texts in embossed Roman lettering which the blind could decipher.
Two years after Braille’s arrival Charles Barbier exhibited at the institution an apparatus by which a coded message in dots and dashes could be embossed on cardboard. Braille worked on this system and was able to adapt it to meet the need of the sightless. He published expositions of his system in 1829 and 1837.
Braille became a dedicated teacher at his school and also a talented organist. It was through his life’s work that thousands of blind people today can read.
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