Context
Home    Thesis     Context     Impact     People     Resources     

Historical Context

First of all...what is Braille?

Louis Braille's first version of braille, composed for the French alphabet. 

(Credit: SteveStrummer)


Braille is a tactile system that helps blind and visually impaired people to read and write. It consists of braille cells which are arrangements of six raised dots in the configuration of a rectangle. The reading process of braille involves using the fingertips of both hands, usually the index fingers, to feel across the lines of the dots.  Rather than a language, braille is more of a code that comes in nearly every language around the world. ​​​​​​​

Who is Louis Braille?

Portrait of Louis Braille

(Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Braille was named after the inventor himself, Louis Braille. Born on January 4, 1809, in Coupvray, France, Louis would lose his sight at age three after accidentally stabbing his right eye with a sharp stitching awl in his father's harness workshop. His right eye became infected and spread to his other eye, making him completely blind in both eyes. Despite his disability, he continued to attend school in his village by relying on his sense of hearing. At age ten, Louis received a scholarship at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, one of the first schools for blind children in the world. He would later become a teacher at the Royal Institute and an accomplished Church organist.

How did Braille come about?

Captain Charles Barbier's "Night Writing" or sonography was a precursor of Braille.

(Credit: ParisLessTraveled.WordPress.com)  

Braille was based on a system called "night writing" developed by Charles Barbier, who served in Napoleon Bonaparte's French Army. It was a tactile system of embossed dots and dashes, representing different sounds that enabled soldiers to safely communicate with each other on the battlefield without having to expose themselves by using a lamp or speaking. However, this system was rather complex because it was too challenging for the French soldiers to read or learn it, therefore it was rejected. Louis Braille spent three years simplifying the form of "night writing" by reducing Barbier’s twelve-dot cell system into a six-dot cell that could be read with a single touch.  In 1829, he finally published his first-ever Braille book, explaining how his entire  code works. 

Louis Braille published his code in 1829 at the age of 20. 

(Credit: American Printing House for the Blind) 

Copy of Louise Braille's book titled Procédé pour Écrire les Paroles, la Musique et le Plain-Chant au Moyen de Points à l'Usage des Aveugles et Disposé pour Eux, which translates to rocedure for Writing Words, Music, and Plainsong in Dots

(Credit: http://www.duxburysystems.org)


Louis Braille's Death

A memorial to Braille stands in the The Panthéon, Paris. It includes audio recordings and Braille inscriptions. Visitors are allowed to touch and interact with it. 

(Credit: Son of Groucho from Scotland)

Unfortunately, Louis Braille died of tuberculosis in 1852 at age forty-three, only two years before his six-dot method was eventually approved to be taught at the institution where he'd been a student. It would not be until 1860 that his system would be adopted in the United States at the Missouri School for the Blind. By 1932, a universal Braille code for English was formalized. One hundred years later after his death, Louis Braille was reburied at the Panthéon in Paris in honor of his work, but his hands remained buried in Coupvray near his home.