Louis BrailleLouis Braille was born in Coupvray near Paris, France. His father, Simon-René Braille, was a harness and saddle maker. At the age of three, Braille injured his left eye with a stitching awl from his father's workshop. This destroyed his left eye, and sympathetic ophthalmia may have led to loss of vision in his right. Braille was completely blind by the age of four. Despite his disability, Braille continued to attend school, with the support of his parents, until he was required to read and write.At the age of ten, Braille earned a scholarship to the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institution for Blind Youth) in Paris. It was one of the first of its kind in the world. The scholarship was his ticket out of the usual fate for the blind: begging for money on the streets of Paris. However, the conditions in the school were not much better. Braille was served stale bread and water, and students were sometimes beaten and locked up as punishment.Braille, a bright and creative student, became a talented cellist and organist in his time at the school, playing the organ for churches all over France.At the school, the children were taught basic craftsman's skills and simple trades. They were also taught how to read by feeling raised letters (a system devised by the school's founder, Valentin Haüy). However, because the raised letters were made using paper pressed against copper wire, the students never learned to write.In 1821, a former soldier named Charles Barbier visited the school. Barbier shared his invention called "night writing," a code of twelve raised dots that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without having to speak. Although the...
