Louis Braille

Blind from age three, Louis Braille learned to read at a school for the

blind in Paris where, at that time, books for the blind could weigh as

much as a hundred pounds! Inspired by the indented dots on dice, he

invented the Braille system of reading and writing.

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In 1812, a three-year-old boy was playing in his father’s leather workshop in Coupvray,
France when he had an accident that would change the world. Louis Braille accidentally
poked himself in the eye with an awl: The metal point blinded him in one eye and an
infection soon left him totally blind.
Louis was a bright boy and won a scholarship to a school for the blind in Paris. It was not
a particularly nice place; students were often fed bread and water and locked up for
punishment. Louis and the other blind children were taught various skills (Louis became
expert at playing the organ and cello), and they were taught to read. At that time, books
for the blind used raised letters with metal wires under the paper, and some of the books
weighed one hundred pounds!
One day, a soldier visited the school and talked about a code system that he had invented
in the French army. It used raised dots and dashes on a piece of paper to allow soldiers to
send each other messages in the dark while remaining silent.
Louis and the other children found the system too confusing, but the basic idea stuck in
the boy’s head. He began experimenting with different ways of creating a language using
raised dots on paper - and for this, he used the same awl that had blinded him! One day,
Louis Braille happened to pick up a pair of dice and feel the six dots on one side. That’s