The Origin and Development of Braille

Key Insight

Louis Braille was born in 1809 in Coupvray, France. At the age of three, he accidentally wounded his eye, leading to an infection that spread and left him totally blind. Despite the common fate of ignorance and poverty for blind individuals at the time, his intelligence was recognized. Through the village priest and a schoolteacher, he first attended local school and then, at age 10, was sent to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris.

A significant challenge in blind education was the inability to read printed books. Valentin Haüy, the Paris school's founder, had developed a system of raised letters on paper, but it was difficult to use, and few books were produced. Haüy's approach was limited by a paradigm that assumed letters must 'look' or 'feel' like their printed counterparts. An alternative code, 'écriture nocturne' or 'night writing', emerged in 1819 from French army captain Charles Barbier, using raised dots and dashes on heavy paper for soldiers to communicate silently in the dark. Soldiers used a stylus to poke patterns, which were then read by touch. However, Barbier's system was complex, based on sounds rather than letters, making it inadequate for extensive texts.

At age 12, Louis Braille encountered Barbier's system and appreciated its raised dots for ease of reading and writing. He dedicated himself to improving it, and within three years, by age 15, he developed his own system, the fundamentals of which are still in use today. Initially confined to his school, Braille's system gradually gained global recognition. In 1835, Louis Braille contracted tuberculosis, which led to his death in 1852, shortly after his 43rd birthday. Today, Braille remains an invaluable system, especially for those who are both blind and deaf, and its public presence has grown with its inclusion on elevators and automatic teller machines.