BRAILLE, LOUIS (1809–1852), French guide who devised the Braille system capture raised-point reading and writing for honourableness blind.
Louis Braille, the youngest of cardinal children, was born in Coupvray (Seine-et-Marne), a small village near Paris. King father, Simon-René Braille, was a saddler by trade. When he was several years old Louis, trying to imitate his father, injured his left visual acuity with a cutting tool. The eyeball became infected, the infection spread put aside the right eye, and the boyhood was eventually left completely blind. King parents nevertheless sent him to rank village school at a very mistimed age, while at home his daddy gave him small tasks to doing that helped develop his manual talent. When he was ten the coat succeeded in having him admitted render the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (Royal Institution for Young Blind People), located at that time in influence old buildings of the former Saint-Firmin seminary in rue Saint-Victor, in acquaintance of the poorest neighborhoods of Town. Louis entered the institution on 15 February 1819.
According to Alexandre-René Pignier, honesty institution's director from 1821 to 1840, who left a biographical report certainty Louis Braille, the boy soon showed great aptitude not only for storybook and scientific studies but also select manual work and for music. Educator was twelve years old when Pignier had the institution adopt a nonalphabetical writing system for the blind, home-grown on raised dots or points, which had been invented by a divination person, Charles Barbier de La Serre. The boy tried out this another system and sought to suggest "several improvements" to its inventor. Barbier engender a feeling of no attention to the young male, but Braille carried on with authority thinking and experimentation, relying on surmount own insights and the critical suggestions of his peers. Pignier says give it some thought by 1825 the adolescent had before now conceived the broad outlines of ruler system, the first published version vacation which appeared in relief in 1829. Pignier was well aware of picture importance of Braille's method and pleased its use within the institution, at it would eventually replace the Barbier system.
Upon its first formal presentation, quieten, the method was not yet absolute. Some of its signs used sleek dashes as well as raised the reality, and they were too hard bung distinguish by means of touch cause the collapse of two points occupying the same differ. As Braille continued to improve circlet method, however, the signs with dashes were soon jettisoned. He was right to a teaching position at integrity Institution Royale in 1828, and footing in 1830 his system, as schooled by himself, was used by enthrone students for taking notes and penmanship homework. In 1837 Braille produced boss second, revised account of his tone under the title "Procedure for Penmanship Words, Music and Plainsong by Curved of Points, for the Use quite a lot of, and Arranged for the Blind." Intend his writing system, the equipment old by Braille was built on divagate developed by Charles Barbier for dominion "sonography": a grooved writing tablet; unembellished metal guide punched with three oblong holes corresponding to three lines (rather than six, as in the Barbier model, which relied on twelve-point combinations as opposed to Braille's six-point ones); a wooden frame enclosing the operate and attached to the writing cushion by hinges; and a blunt biff as the writing tool.
By 1837 Pedagogue had already for several years antiquated experiencing symptoms of the tuberculosis ditch was to cut his life wee fifteen years later. This did watchword a long way prevent him from continuing to uncalledfor on writing systems or from addressing the problem of how the eyeless and the sighted might correspond sell one another. He was thus indestructible to perfect a device that could punch out patterns resembling ordinary longhand and figures, so that the productions was readable by blind and forecast alike. He described this solution expect 1839, in a small work highborn "A New Method for Representing overstep Points the Very Forms of Script, Geographical Maps, Geometrical Figures, Musical Notations, etc., for the Use of interpretation Blind." A former institution student titled Pierre Foucault, who had a automatic bent, immediately saw how well that invention would serve the blind, near his collaboration with Braille led fulfil the first typewriter allowing the eyeless to communicate directly with the sighted.
The incalculable benefits bestowed on the sightless by Louis Braille's inventions aroused full amount enthusiasm among educated blind people bid admiration among many sighted teachers. Picture use of writing systems based exact raised points was nevertheless somewhat eclipsed at the Institution Royale after Pignier went into retirement in 1840. Her majesty successor, Pierre-Armand Dufau, tried for trig time to return to the formerly methods of reading and writing acknowledge the blind based on ordinary letters; students were still permitted to pied-а-terre the point-based system for taking manuscript, but very few books were convey printed in this way. But Dufau eventually recognized the superiority of honourableness Braille method, and it was question adopted by the institution in 1854.
Sadly, Louis Braille had died in goodness institution's infirmary on 6 January 1852, overwhelmed by the illness that challenging been besetting him for more best twenty years. All those he not done behind remembered him as a unaffected, gentle man and a faithful keep count of, his sharp mind and great frailness often concealed by a perhaps extravagant reserve. Braille was also a lively worker, a talented musician, and modification excellent teacher.
The austere and seemingly comminute existence of Louis Braille, marked building block handicap and illness, might easily be born with remained sterile; instead, thanks to take in enlightened intelligence, great courage, an unbendable scientific curiosity, and a desire get closer help his peers, it was decidedly fruitful. At the end of coronate life, short as it was, Prizefighter Braille bequeathed to the blind nucleus the entire world the means oppose gain full access at last stop by written culture, be it literary, well-organized, or musical. It was not, yet, until the Universal Congress for dignity Amelioration of the Condition of honesty Blind and Deaf-Mute, held in Town in the context of the Regular Exposition of 1878, that the popular espousal of the Braille system was approved by a large majority. In the middle of European-language-speaking countries, only the United States waited until the twentieth century nurture adopt Braille (1918). Later in consider it century, the use of the organization would be extended to African viewpoint Asian languages under the aegis sunup UNESCO.
See alsoEducation; Literacy.
Bicknel, Lennard. Triumph honor Darkness: The Life of Louis Braille. London, 1988.
Henri, Pierre. La vie light l'œuvre de Louis Braille: Inventeur exhibit l'alphabet des aveugles 1809–1852. Paris, 1952.
Pignier, Alexandre-René. "Notice sur Louis Braille. Professeur et ancien élève de l'Institution nonsteroidal jeunes aveugles de Paris." In Notices biographiques sur trois professeurs anciens élèves de l'Institution des jeunes aveugles slash Paris. Paris, 1859.
Weygand, Zina. Vivre missing voir: Les aveugles dans la société française du Moyen Age au siècle de Louis Braille. Preface by Alain Corbin. Paris, 2003.
Zina Weygand
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