Louis was a blind boy. He had been able to see when he was born, but a serious accident lost him his sight. He was sent to a school for blind children.
But Louis did not waste his time feeling sorry for himself because he could not see like other children. Reading was the skill he most longed to have; & he began to dream of finding a way to help blind people to read easily. He tried one method after another, but without success. Then one day he heard of a captain in the army who had found a way of sending messages to his soldiers at night. He did it by piercing a piece of cardboard so as to form letters on its surface. Louis knew at once that this was the answer he was seeking.
It took him ten years to work out this system. But he kept at it steadily, & at last he had perfected it. And today the name of this blind boy is known throughout the World, & especially by the blind, for the system of reading which he created is called by his own surname--Braille.
Louis Braille (English pronunciation: /ˈbreɪl/; French: [bʁɑj]) (January 4, 1809 – January 6, 1852) was the inventor of braille,[1] a worldwide 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.
Louis Braille became blind at the age of 3, when he accidentally poked himself in the eye with a stitching awl, one of his father's workshop tools. The injury wasn't thought to be serious until it got infected. Braille's other eye went blind because of sympathetic ophthalmia.
At the very young age of 10, Braille earned a scholarship to the National Institute for the Blind in Paris,[2] one of the first of its kind in the world. However, the conditions in the school were not notably better. Louis was served stale bread and water, and students were sometimes abused or locked up as a form of punishment.
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.
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 was 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. The school had just 14 books, all of which Louis had read. He liked to learn and to play music.
(Wikipedia)
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