Braille [1]
Another renowned, Louis Braille, whose invention had an impact throughout the world.
Louis Braille [2] (1809-1852) invented the Braille method for the blind. At age 3, he injured his eye with one of his father’s tools. As a result of complications, he lost the other eye. Quite soon his parents sent him to the village school where Louis proved to be an excellent student. At 10, he entered the institute for blind youth in Paris. Despite the archaic education, Louis Braille appeared to be diligent and intelligent. He spent years to develop a writing system based on the symbolic representative of letters.
Being a teacher, he discovered the Barbier [3] process. This officer had developed a reading system for military purposes to allow soldiers to read and write in the dark. The system consisted of raised lines and dots arranged on very thick paper. He was tremendously inspired by the process to create his own method. In 1829, Louis Braille published “Process for Writing Speeches, Music and Plainchant by Means of Dots, for the Use of the Blind and Arranged for Them”.
[1]. Translated by me from: p. 152. Le Braille. Better Reading French. Annie Heminway. McGraw Hill. New York … Toronto. 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braille
[2]. Louis Braille. 1/4/1809-1/6/1852. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille
[3]. Charles Barbier. 3/18/1767-4/22/1841. Inventor of several forms of shorthand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Barbier
The braille story on youtube:
