Louis Braille

Louis Braille was born in the French city of Coupvray and died in Paris.

Braille, accidentally, lost his sight when he was 3 years old. When 10-years-old, he was admitted to the National Institute of the Blind Youth in Paris, where as a gifted pupil later when he was 20 he started to teach mathematics and playing musical instruments.
Braille became famous as the inventor of writing for the blind. In fact he adapted, simplified and systematized existing twelve-point font created by Charles Barbier who was a French army officer. A sign which then had twelve points (arranged in two columns by two points), Braille simplified (removed six points) and created a system of signs which combinations were sufficient to write all the letters and digits. Braille alphabet succeeded just several years after his death.

In 1829 he issued a methodological aid named Approach to writing etc. for the needs of the blind in which he introduced its own language for the blind, which was characterized by the fact that it was much easier than the previous ones. Today it is used worldwide, even for Cyrillic, Arabic and Chinese characters.
National Institute for the Blind Youth in Paris adopted Braille just two years prior to the death of its author.

The first book written in this style was The history of France (1837). In 1838, Braille wrote a textbook of arithmetic and later gave foundations to the music notation for the blind (as a music teacher and an excellent musician).

Issues connected with the approval of Braille were dealt also by international congresses of the teachers of the blind. Just Third Congress (1879) recommended Braille for trial period.