Did you ever wonder how the Braille system for the blind was created?

By David McClelland

Louis Braille was born in 1809 near Paris, France. He became blind at age three (3) after an accident when he accidently poked himself in the eye with his father's leather awl. Both of his eyes became infected and he lost the sight of both eyes. As he became older, he desperately wanted to be able to read. At age 10, he was sent to a school for the blind in Paris where children were taught to read and write using a system of raised letters. The system was difficult to use as it was hard to tell the letters apart. One day, in 1921, a soldier, Charles Barbier, visited the school. He had devised a system of raised dots to form the alphabet. Braille saw the potential.

At age 15, and three years of experimenting with proposed systems, he devised a simpler system whereby he used just six (6) dots arranged in two vertical columns of three. With just those six dots, he was able to design the 26-letter alphabet, all ten numbers and eleven other symbols representing punctuation marks. The system even has several short words.   When he grew up, he became a teacher in that same school for the blind.

It wasn't until after Braille's death in 1852 that his system was widely adopted and is now used in virtually every country. It has been adapted to every known language. Braille contracted tuberculosis and died in Paris at age 43. His system was officially adopted in France two years after his death and became widely used thereafter.

An example of the Braille system follows. Using two, vertical columns of three dots each, an "a" has one raised dot in the upper left corner. A "b" has the top two dots in the left column raised and a "c" has the top two dots raised, one in each column. Braille reached his goal of having many books of all kinds printed in Braille.

If you want to know more about Braille's life, Margaret Davidson's 1971 book, Louis Braille, the Boy Who Invented Books for the Blind, is a good read. Of course, you can also google "Braille" for a vast amount of information. Now, you know how Braille's system was created.