Louis Braille inspired by thirst for reading

Press, 12 November 1985, Page 14

Louis Braille inspired by thirst for reading

Most people are lucky enough to be able to learn to read without too many problems, but for blind people life is different. A system that enables blind people to read and write was developed 170 years ago by Louis Braille, the son of a French saddlemaker who lived in the village of Coupvray. Blinded by an accident in his father’s workshop at the age of three, Louis Braille entered the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris when he was 10.

There he developed his system of reading. It is a code of small raised dots on paper than can be read by touch. The idea came from a dot-dash code that a French captain had used to send messages to his soldiers at night. In 1829 Braille published his dot system. It was based on a “cell” of six dots, which could be arranged in 63 possible ways. From those 63 combinations Braille worked out an alphabet, punctuation marks, numerals, and later a system for writing music. At first his code was not officially accepted, but later it was universally accepted for all written languages. The blind read Braille by passing their fingers along

the dots. Braille can be written on a six-key machine called a braillewriter or on a metal or plastic slate. Braille books are pressed from metal plates. The characters are stamped on both sides of the paper by a method called interpointing. Dots on one side of the page do not interfere with those printed on the other. In the last 25 years publishers have used computers to speed up production of Braille books. A computer changes regular punched cards, which have been prepared by a typist, into cards punched with a braille code. Louis Braille was, at 10, the youngest pupil attending the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris — the other pupils’ ages ranged up to 22.

When he entered the famous school no-one told Louis, who was so keen to learn to read, that the institution had only three books in its library, printed in a special kind of embossing with huge letters.

Valentin Hauy started the world’s first school for blind children in the 1780 s after having to pay his first pupil, a professional 17-year-old beggar, for the privilege of teaching him. Hauy used an alphabet made of a set of

letters carved on thin wooden tablets. His school was in Paris, in an old house on the Rue Coquilliere. After years of struggle to establish the school, once the start was made it attracted favourable interest Before the end of his first year at the school Hauy received an invitation from King Louis XVI to give a demonstration at the Court. After attracting international attention Hauy’s lead was quickly followed in other European centres. Schools modelled after his were founded in Germany, Austria, Prussia and England. In 1806 Valentin Hauy went to St Petersburg to set up a programme of training for blind Russian youth. The school he had set up in Paris — from which Hauy was dismissed by Napoleon — later became the Natinal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended. By the time Braille entered it had a well-developed programme. In spite of progress Louis was restless at the institute. He told one of his teachers: “The blind are the loneliest people in the world, I can tell the different birds by their songs, and I can find my way about with my stick. But without books —

real books — we blind can never learn.”

Life did get better. Louis became an accomplished musician, playing the organ in several Paris churches, and in 1828 was appointed a teacher at the institute.

To help other teachers use his “alphabet,” Louis Braille published his first book, with the long title, “Method of writing words, music and plain songs by means of dots, for use by the blind and arranged for them.”

Later, in 1834, he exhibited his system at the Exposition. A year later, Braille contracted tuberculosis.

In 1839 Braille began working with another blind Frenchman, Pierre Foucault. They drew letters of the alphabet as used by sighted people. Then with a stylus the letters were converted into a series of little dots, still shaped like conventional letters of the alphabet. This led to the publishing of a second book, “The new method for representing by dots the form of the letters themselves, for use by the blind.” This sytem, and its equipment, the basic components of the typewriter, was called “Raphigraphy.” He then set out to perfect

his dots and dashes system as a method by which the blind could master mathematics, and published it in a further book: “A little synopsis of Arithmetic for Beginners.”

Louis Braille died of tuberculosis a few days after his 43rd birthday. Before then, his system, not then known as “Braille” but simply called “the system of writing by means of dots” had become part of the official curriculum at the Natinal Institute. When he died, it was not considered a matter of public importance and there was no mention of his death in any Paris newspapers. However, on June 20,1952, a century after Braille was quietly buried in the cemetery at Coupvray, newspapers all over the world carried headline stories about the removal of his body to a new resting place.

His remains were carefully exhumed, and the simple coffin was replaced. His hands, “hands which had first caressed the raised dots of the Braille alphabet,” were sealed in an urn and left in Coupvray. The next day Braille received the highest honour his country could bestow — burial in the Pantheon.