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Louis Braille: a short biography
On January 4, 1809, in France, in the provincial Couvre, a son was born to the family of the shoemaker Simon Braille. They named him Louis. Fate prepared him for difficult trials, but he withstood them with dignity and gained worldwide fame.
Accident
For days, the kid fiddled with pieces of leather in his father’s workshop. They served him as toys. At the age of 3, Louis tried to make a hole in one of the pieces. But the child’s hand suddenly slipped off and the tip of the sewer, which was not perfectly clean of skin particles, hit the eye.
In two years, the infection spread to the baby’s other eye. At the age of five, Louis became blind. What fate could await a blind man? Poverty, hunger, begging? Gradually, the parents came to terms with the tragedy, but did everything in their power for the development of their son.
He learned to weave fringes and sew felt shoes. Three times a week a teacher came to the house and taught Louis how to play the violin. His father made a board, into which he drove nails that repeated the outlines of the letters, and taught him to read. The boy was sent to a regular school.
An inquisitive student had an excellent memory, all this helped Louis achieve excellent results in all school disciplines. The teacher advised his parents to send him for further education, and at the age of 10 he was admitted to an institute for the blind in Paris.
The educational institution was called the Royal, but the classrooms were located in damp and stuffy rooms. It was dangerous for the fragile organism and many children, including Louis, subsequently suffered from tuberculosis. In addition to basic subjects, students here were taught to play the piano and organ, knit and weave.
The main emphasis was placed on the development of tactility. Such classes allowed pupils to earn their own living in the future and not become a burden for relatives. And most importantly, they became independent.
Here we used tutorials with bumpy-linear type. But unfortunately, they were not enough, and in some disciplines they were not. Braille has become one of the best students.
In 1828 he finished his studies and was offered the position of a junior teacher here. Louis taught the children geography, history, algebra and music, and on weekends he played the organ at the Saint-Nicolas de Champs temple.
“Night alphabet”
In that era, the blind were taught using the so-called “night alphabet”. It was invented in 1821 by Captain Barbier de la Serre. It was used by soldiers when reports arrived at night. They were written down by piercing holes in the cardboard, and read by touching them with fingers on the other side.
The holes were arranged in 2 lines of 6 pieces each, and denoted different sounds. The teenager Louis didn’t like the alphabet. There were many dots, but there were no punctuation marks or notes. It was impossible to apply the spelling rules in it. But the very idea of using convex holes interested him.
Braille alphabet
He was inspired by the desire to create a new user-friendly font and worked on this idea all his free time. Louis experimented constantly. Even during the summer holidays, when he came to visit relatives in Couvre, he was seen sitting by the road. He pierced a sheet of cardboard with a needle.
In 1824, 16-year-old Braille seemed to dawn. He created an alphabet of 63 dot combinations. A blind person can read by running the tip of his finger over these points. Louis went on to work and added punctuation marks, numbers and notes. A detailed “instruction” for working with the font has been published.
In 1829, Braille made a presentation of the new alphabet to the board of directors of the institute, but the board found it inconvenient for sighted teachers. Blind people have achieved re-examination of the font. Only after that was it recognized as much more convenient than the previous system.
Braille alphabet
The invention of the blind man became the standard. A modified version appeared in 1837.
De la Serre, who was tormented by envy, began to denigrate him in every possible way. Subsequently, many attempts have been made to replace Braille, sometimes with Moon’s, or with a font invented in New York. But, fortunately, all these attempts were unsuccessful.
Louis Braille, for his part, tried to spread the alphabet for the blind in different countries. He taught music to the blind by the special signs of writing notes.
Braille died on January 6, 1852 in Paris at the age of 43. Originally buried in the Couvre cemetery. But in 1952 his remains were reburied in the capital’s Pantheon. A museum has been opened in the house where the inventor spent his childhood.
Braille did not have time to learn about the complete triumph of his invention. In 1854, his scientific discovery spread throughout all European countries. The first book with Braille was published in 1837 – “History of France”.
Denis Obolensky
In Russia, the alphabet for the blind appeared in 1885. Denis Obolensky was the first to master it, who became blind at the age of 7. His father, Prince Obolensky, was completely ruined, and he had to serve in the capital department. Mother constantly insisted that when Denis grew up, he would go to the monastery.
Already at the age of 10, the boy understood that no one needed him. But on his way he met a German student Rup, who knew a lot about the famous blind. He told the boy about the blind teacher Johann Knie, about the Belgian deputy Rodenbach, and about King George V, who ruled Hanover.
When Rup returned home, Denis was seized with despair, he did not want to spend his whole life in the monastery. My uncle gave money for the trip for the whole family. In 1857 they came to Heidelberg and met Madame Sperling and her daughters.
This woman recently lost a blind son, and she, taking the boy’s misfortune to heart, wrote out a “Braille board” from Paris, and her daughters taught the boy to read. After 4 years, Denis adapted Braille signs to the Russian language, and in 1870 he improved it.
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