The Man Behind the Code-Louis Braille Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 with
sight near Paris, France. However, when he was three- years-old, he accidentally struck himself in the eye with an awl (a pointed tool used to make holes in leather). When the other eye became infected, too, Louis became totally blind.
Louis was very smart and did so well in school
that he was allowed to go to a special school for the blind in Paris, France to continue his education. When the blind students were taught to read, they learned to feel large copper-wire letters. As you can see, reading a simple story took a long time.
One day an army captain named Charles Barbier
visited the school and discussed night writing, a 12 dot code used to communicate during battle so that the enemy did not know what was written. At age 15, Louis created a simpler six-dot code based on the 26 letters of the alphabet. By changing the number and placement of dots, he created letters, punctuation, numbers and family words. He also wanted to read the Bible and developed many Biblical signs, such as putting a dot 5 before the letter l to make the word lord.
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