Biography of Louis Braille

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4 January 1809
6 January 1852
Louis Braille, the inventor of the system of writing and reading in relief for the blind that bears his name, was born on 4 January 1809 in Coupvray, a small town not far from Paris. His father Simon-Rene Braille is craftsman cobbler. At the age of four, playing with the gear in the shop of his father, Louis tragically loses an eye. After a short time due to the infection caused by the accident, will also lose the second.
Louis attending regolarmmente schools; without the ability to read and write, but couldn't keep pace. It's the 1819 when, at the age of 10 years, is welcomed in the Paris Institute for the blind (Institution des Jeunes Aveugles), one of the first institutions in the world for blind boys, founded 25 years earlier by Valentin Haüy. Life was not easy: the boys were taught a trade requiring manual skills, such as that of the taxidermist of chairs. Leisure breaks and on Sundays, the boys were free to walk around the Park, with the particularity of being tied together with a long rope. Among the activities there was even reading by touch; the characters were the same as those used for print, accented by a copper wire placed on the front side of the sheet, which the index fingertip acknowledged touching the paper. They were not taught to write. In the years of the Braille Institute, in addition to receiving an education major, he devoted himself to music.
Becomes skilled organist, much appreciated by being often required in various churches for religious ceremonies. In 1827 Louis Braille is inserted into the Faculty of the Institute. Through teaching has no way to verify and analyse the difficulties presented by the education of youth who are blind. In the time it takes a blind boy to read a line, a boy gifted with the sight could read two pages. One day a soldier, Charles Barbier, pays a visit to the Institute. These encounters Braille and speaks to him in a way that was designed to transmit information at night, in the dark, in the trenches: consisted of twelve-point system that represent different sounds. From this cue the brilliant idea of Braille will come out, in 1829, when the guy has only twenty. Braille simplifies the system, reducing it to a combination of six points; by means of this combination it is possible to represent all the letters of the alphabet. After a long study, thus writing system points out that will carry his name. The same Braille will extend also to the representation method of musical notation and mathematics. For writing work with sheets of heavy paper, placed above a bar of iron, which runs on a slide. By moving the slide rule determines the rows, one below the other. You write with an awl that punched point raises rigid paper cones.
The system is practical and extremely simplified: the combination of points, one through six, is punched with a constant, according to a given bin in the range between two rows. The letter A is equivalent to a dot at the top left; the letter C is two dots next to each other; the letter G is represented by four dots, and so on. Louis Braille applies for his method in the Institute where he is a teacher. Only a few years after the new system will be adopted worldwide. Tactile alphabet invented by Louis Braille has allowed the blind to read and write independently, and then communicate, even if only among those who are familiar with this particular system, making a historic step in the integration of the blind into society. Louis Braille moure in Paris only 43 years, on 6 January 1852, following a severe form of TB. By 1952 his body rests in the Pantheon in Paris, in recognition of his work on behalf of humanity.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.