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Louis Braille (January 4, 1809 – January 6, 1852) was the inventor of braille[1], a world-wide system used by blind and visually impaired people for reading and writing. Braille is read by passing the fingers over characters made up of an arrangement of one to six embossed points. It has been adapted to almost every known language, except Asian languages based on characters. He was also blind. Image File history File links Braille. ...
January 4 is the 4th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
Year 1809 (MDCCCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ...
The village of Coupvray, in France, lies about 36 miles east of Paris. ...
January 6 is the 6th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
1852 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...
City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) The Eiffel Tower in Paris, as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ...
The Panthéon Interior Dome of the Panthéon Entrance of the Panthéon Voltaires statue and tomb in the crypt of the Panthéon The Panthéon (Latin Pantheon[1], from Greek Pantheon, meaning All the Gods) is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. ...
is the 4th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
Year 1809 (MDCCCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar). ...
is the 6th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1852 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...
Braille code where the word (, French for first) can be read. ...
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or psychological factors. ...
Visual impairment is the functional loss of vision. ...
Braille code where the word (, French for first) can be read. ...
Embossing is the process of creating a three-dimensional image or design in paper. ...
Biography
His father was a saddle maker by the name of Simon-Rene Braille. His mother’s name was Monique Baron-Braille. Louis Braille became blind at the age of 3-4, when he accidentally stabbed himself in the eye with his father's awl. The resulting infection spread to his other eye and eventually blinded him in both eyes. An awl is a woodworking tool used to mark a piece of wood. ...
At the very young age of 10, Braille earned a scholarship to the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institution for Blind Youth) in Paris, one of the first of its kind in the world. The scholarship was his ticket out of the usual fate for the blind, begging for money on the streets of Paris. However, the conditions in the school were not notably better. Braille was served stale bread and water, and students were sometimes abused or locked up as a form of punishment. The Royal Institution for Blind Youth (Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles), founded in 1785 by Valentin Haüy in Paris, was the first school for the blind in the world. ...
Braille, a bright and creative student, became a talented cellist and organist in his time at the school, playing the organ for churches all over France. The violoncello, usually abbreviated to cello, or cello (the c is pronounced as in the ch of check), is a bowed stringed instrument, a member of the violin family. ...
Organ in Katharinenkirche, Frankfurt am Main, Germany The organ is a keyboard instrument played using one or more manuals and a pedalboard. ...
At the school, the children were taught basic craftsman skills and simple trades. They were also taught how to read by feeling raised letters (a system devised by the school's founder, Valentin Haüy). However, because the raised letters were made using paper pressed against copper wire, the students never learned to write. Another disadvantage to these raised letters is that the letters weighed a lot and whenever people published books using this system, they put together a book with multiple stories in one in order to save money. This made the books sometimes weigh over a hundred pounds. Valentin Haüy (13 November 1745 - 19 March 1822) was the founder of the first school for the blind. ...
In 1821, Charles Barbier, a former soldier, visited the school. Barbier shared his invention called "sonography" a code of 12 raised dots and a number of dashes that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without having to speak. Although the code was too difficult for the average soldier, Braille picked it up quickly. Year 1821 (MDCCCXXI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ...
Charles Barbier de la Serre was the creator of night writing. ...
Night writing was a system of code that used symbols of twelve dots arranged as two columns of six dots. ...
 Braille's tomb in the crypt of the Panthéon. The same year Louis began inventing his raised-dot system with his father's stitching awl, finishing at age 15. His system used only six dots and corresponded to letters, whereas Barbier's used 12 dots corresponding to sounds. The six-dot system allowed the recognition of letters with a single fingertip apprehending all the dots at once, requiring no movement or repositioning which slowed recognition in systems requiring more dots. These dots consisted of patterns in order to keep the system easy to learn. The Braille system also offered numerous benefits over Haüy's raised letter method, the most notable being the ability to both read and write an alphabet. Another very notable benefit is that because they were dots just slightly raised, there was a significant difference in make up. Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ...
Braille code where the word (, French for first) can be read. ...
Image File history File links Size of this preview: 674 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (941 × 837 pixel, file size: 156 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Brailles tomb in the Pantheon, Paris, France. ...
Image File history File links Size of this preview: 674 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (941 × 837 pixel, file size: 156 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Brailles tomb in the Pantheon, Paris, France. ...
The Panthéon Interior Dome of the Panthéon Entrance of the Panthéon Voltaires statue and tomb in the crypt of the Panthéon The Panthéon (Latin Pantheon[1], from Greek Pantheon, meaning All the Gods) is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. ...
Braille later extended his system to include notation for mathematics and music. The first book in braille was published in 1827 under the title Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them. In 1839 Braille published details of a method he had developed for communication with sighted people, using patterns of dots to approximate the shape of printed symbols. Braille and his friend Pierre Foucault went on to develop a machine to speed up the somewhat cumbersome system. The Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics is a method of encoding mathematical and scientific notation linearly using standard six-dot Braille cells for tactile reading by the visually impaired. ...
Braille music is a Braille code that allows music to be notated using Braille cells so that music can be read by visually impaired musicians. ...
Braille became a well-respected teacher at the Institute. Although he was admired and respected by his pupils, his braille system was not taught at the Institute during his lifetime. The air at the institute was foul and he died in Paris of tuberculosis in 1852 at the age of 43; his body was disinterred in 1952 (the centenary of his death) and honored with re-interment in the Panthéon in Paris. Year 1952 (MCMLII) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...
The Panthéon Interior Dome of the Panthéon Entrance of the Panthéon Voltaires statue and tomb in the crypt of the Panthéon The Panthéon (Latin Pantheon[1], from Greek Pantheon, meaning All the Gods) is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris, France. ...
Legacy The significance of the braille system was not identified until 1868, sixteen years after Louis Braille died, when Dr Thomas Rhodes Armitage and a group of four blind men and one woman established the British and Foreign Society for Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind (later the Royal National Institute of the Blind), which published books in Braille's system. Year 1868 (MDCCCLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Monday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ...
Thomas Rhodes Armitage (1824-1890) was the British physician who founded the Royal National Institute of the Blind. ...
The Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) is a United Kingdom charity, which was set up to lobby for and help people who are blind or partially sighted. ...
Braille has been adapted to almost every major national language and is the primary system of written communication for visually impaired persons around the world.
The asteroid 9969 Braille was named in honor of him. 9969 Braille is a small Mars-crosser asteroid that was discovered on May 27, 1992 by Eleanor F. Helin and Kenneth J. Lawrence at Palomar Observatory and named after Louis Braille, inventor of the reading system for the blind. ...
See also Braille code where the word (, French for first) can be read. ...
A screen reader is a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen. ...
Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a system is usable by as many people as possible. ...
1922 Chart of the Morse Code Letters and Numerals Morse code is a method for transmitting telegraphic information, using standardized sequences of short and long elements to represent the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a message. ...
Notes - ^ To prevent confusion the proper noun "Braille" is written in lower case ("braille") when referring to the writing system.
A proper noun is a noun that picks out a unique entity. ...
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