Louis Braille Invents Reading

In the small French village of Coupvray, young Louis Braille played in his father's leather workshop. At age three, a tragic accident with a sharp awl left him blind in one eye, and an infection soon took the sight from the other. Despite his blindness, Louis was brilliant and won a scholarship to the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. There, he found a library of only fourteen books with oversized, embossed letters that were difficult to read and impossible to write. In 1821, a captain named Charles Barbier visited the school to demonstrate 'night writing,' a complex code of twelve dots used by soldiers. Louis realized the system was too bulky but saw its potential. For three years, the teenage boy spent his nights refining the code. He reduced the twelve dots to a six-dot cell that fit perfectly under a single fingertip. By 1824, at just fifteen years old, Louis had perfected the system that would open the world of literature and music to millions, proving that sight is not required to see the light of knowledge.