Louis Braille invented braille and published the first braille book for the blind when he was only 12 years old!
Born in 1809, Louis Braille became blind when he was 3 years old. Playing in his fathers harness workshop, he slid a sharp tool across his eye and, after infection spread, became blind in both eyes. Louis was a determined young boy and continued to go to school for a while, listening to the teacher and doing his best to learn. However, this was not enough. He received a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris when he was 10, but still he struggled, along with the other students, because the teacher would only talk at them and the interactive learning was minimal.
In 1821 a former soldier visited the school and shared his invention of “night writing” which was a 12 dot code that let soldiers share top secret information on the battlefield without speaking. This code was difficult for many of the soldiers to understand, but Louis instantly picked it up. Louis slimmed out the system by the time he was 15, making it into 6 dots arranged in different ways. He published the first braille book in 1829 and continued working on the system to add symbols for numbers and music as well!
Braille was not taught until after Louis death, even though he taught at the Royal Institute for many years. He died in 1852, and braille was not fully discovered until 1868 by a group of British men now known as the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Now, practically every country uses braille as a universal written language for the blind.
Even at the age of 12, Louis proved that with the right motivation, you can do incredible things no matter what obstacles you face.
This is pretty amazing. It makes sense that he would easily pick up a language that was meant to use the sense of touch as opposed to sight. For someone who can see I think braille is probably harder to pick up. I am always fascinated when people take the bad hand they have been dealt and use it to create something great. He opened the world to blind people, and leveled the playing field for learning. I think its interesting that braille is universal between languages, its the common translator.
Great post! We often think of entrepreneurship as being a modern trend, but there are some many examples from the past. Louis Braille is just one example of someone who had a problem and found a unique and efficient way to solve it. He just happened to develop an entire language! Thank you for sharing this story!
So cool! I would have never guessed he was so young!
Sometimes inspiration hits you when you least expect it. I’m sure Louis Braille was able to find inspiration through the 12-dot code system from his frustration of learning how to read in school using enlarged and raised letters, which was how the blind read back in that day.