Louis Braille

Louis Braille was born in 1809 in Coupvray, a small village in France. His father made leather things for horses, like saddles. Louis loved to play in his father's workshop.

At three, Louis hurt his eye with a sharp tool in the workshop. Then both eyes got an infection. By the age of five, Louis could not see at all.

At ten, he went to a school for blind children in Paris. The books there had big raised letters, so the children could read them with their fingers. But reading was very slow, and the books were huge and heavy.

One day, Charles Barbier, a man from the army, visited the school. He had a code of raised dots for soldiers. They could read messages at night, with no light. But his code was hard. One sign could have twelve dots, too many for one finger.

Louis worked on the code every day. He made it smaller and simpler: six dots in two columns of three. With six dots, you can make 63 different signs. One finger can feel a whole letter at once.

Today, blind people all over the world read braille. It is in books, on signs, and even on elevator buttons. And the inventor? When Louis finished his code in 1824, he was only fifteen years old.