Facts about Louis Braille

Louis Braille was a French inventor who invented Braille, the raised script read by people with visual impairment. Well, who does not know this? Louis Braille is one of the most famous person with disability in the world. Still, there are many facts about his life that are known by quite a few people. So, here we are with some interesting and lesser-known facts about Louis Braille. Hope this article will not only enhance your general knowledge but will also help you understand Louis Braille and his work better than you currently do.

1. Louis Braille was not blind from birth

Louis was born with perfect eyesight. His father was a leather maker. At the age of three, little Louis was playing in his father’s workshop and he accidentally stuck a stitching awl in one of his eyes. His injured eye got infected and soon the infection spread to his other eye too, as there were no antibiotics. Gradually, by the age of five, the little boy lost sight in both of his eyes.

2. His father could not afford but Louis studied in the Royal Institute for the Blind

Louis Braille’s father earned enough to feed his four children but he could not afford the high-cost education for his blind child. One of the noblewomen somehow got to know the story of little Louis and was moved by it. She got him admitted to the Royal Institute for the Blind which was the world’s first school for blinds. At the age of 10, Louis moved to Paris to start his education in the Royal Institute.

3. The Royal Institute for the Blind was no better than a prison

The school building was an old jail. It was dark, damp and shabby. But, it seems not only the building but also the rules were borrowed from the older jail. Students at the Royal Institute for Blinds were allowed to bathe only once a month. They were given lots of punishment and very little food. They had to follow a very long list of rules. Braille, along with other blind children lived and studied in that institution despite all those harsh situations.

4. Louis created the Braille Language at the age of 15

Once a retired soldier, Charles Barbier visited Louis’s school and told the students about a secret coding system developed by him to be used by soldiers to communicate with each other by punching holes and dashes in a heavy paper. Louis got inspired by the idea and started working on developing his own new system to read and write. It took him two years but he finally created his new script with a six-dot system, just at the age of 15 years. To test his ‘new script’ he was given a dictation by his headmaster. Louis wrote the entire article being dictated from the newspaper in his newly developed script and then read it back word to word. Eureka!

5. Braille was not accepted until after the death of Louis Braille

The new script developed by Louis Braille helped him in many ways and also made him earn respect in his teachers’ eyes. He was also made a full-time teacher in his school at the age of 19. But, his script was not accepted officially. Teachers at the Royal Institute for Blinds thought that the script developed by Louis will make the blinds so independent that they will no more need their teachers. So, they never introduced the students to the system developed by Louis Braille. It was later accepted due to the high demand of the students but till that time Louis was not alive to see how his system helped other blind students.

6. Louis Braille was good at music too

Louis loved reading books but it was not the only thing enjoyed by him. He loved music too. He was a part of his school orchestra where he learned and played cello and organ. It was his love for music because of which he adapted musical notes in his system of Braille. He was a notable organist.

7. Braille’s remains have been buried at two different places

After his death, Louis Braille was buried at his birthplace, Coupvray. Delegates from at least 20 countries attended his funeral. President of the Republic, Vincent Auriol, too was an attendee at the funeral ceremony of Louis Braille. A century after his death, his remains were moved to Paris and were buried in Pantheon. While moving his remains to Paris, his hands were kept at Coupvray, where he was originally buried.

8. There is an asteroid which has been named after Louis Braille

An asteroid which was discovered in 1992 by NASA and was originally called 1992 KD got renamed after Louis Braille in 1999. The asteroid is called 9969Braille as was suggested by Kerry Babcock, an engineer at Kennedy Space Centre. The renaming was done after NASA probe Deep Space 1 zoomed past the asteroid. The asteroid 9969 Braille rotates only once in 9 days and its orbit is greatly tilted as compared to the elliptic plane of the planets.

9. Louis Braille’s childhood home is now a museum

The home in which Louis Braille was born has been turned into a museum dedicated to his life and his works. The house is listed as a historic building. A marble tablet fixed to the outer wall of the house reads “In this house on January 4, 1809, was born Louise Braille inventor of writing in raised dots for use of the blind. He opened the doors of knowledge to those who cannot see”.

Hope you liked this article about Louis Braille. Stay connected to WeCapable for such informative articles.