One day over two hundred years ago, a young French boy was standing in his father’s workshop in the town of Coupvray, not far from Paris. Louis Braille was only three years old, but he loved to watch his father making saddles and harnesses out of tough leather hides. Sometimes his father gave him little scraps of leather to play with, and he pretended he was fitting them together into saddles too. Already, at that young age, he wanted to be just like his father.
Monsieur Braille sewed busily, smiling down at his son every once in a while. The harness maker worked quickly and smoothly, cutting the leather with a sure hand and practiced eye. He held a piece up to the light, examined it closely, and saw that he would need to use a different knife. Laying his work down, he crossed the room to search for the right tool.
Little Louis reached toward the workbench, picked up the awl his father had left behind, and began to poke at his own scrap of leather. He jabbed fiercely at the tough leather, trying to make the point go all the way through. As he stabbed, his young fingers lost their grip. The sharp instrument sprang up and struck his left eye.
Monsieur Braille heard a scream and ran back to his bench, but it was too late. The damage was done.
The horrified parents rushed their young son to the doctor , hoping to save the eye, but the injury was too serious. And then, as time passed, the tragedy deepened. Infection spread to the other eye as well. Before long the boy could not see at all.
In those days people often treated the blind with great cruelty or neglect. Sometimes they were thrown out by their families to beg on the streets or sing for alms. Or they were hired out to do hard labor, like beasts of burden. In many places, blindness was viewed as the work of Satan or divine punishment for sin.
But it was different in the town of Coupvray, where everyone watched out for the little blind Louis. They listened for the tap of his cane and smiled when they saw him coming. They stopped their own work to guide him across the street or around a corner. They helped him count how many taps it took to get to the marketplace, or the edge of town, or school.
Louis and his father would walk together, and the boy would ask, “What color is the sky today?”
“As blue as can be, son,” Monsieur Braille would say. “ As blue as can be.”
But although Louis struggled to recall a vision of blue, the pictures of his youth gradually faded from his mind, and he could no longer remember the beauty of such sights as colors.
He learned to help his father in his shop, handing him tools and pieces of leather. He went to school with his old friends, too, and everyone was surprised at the way he learned by listening and memorizing his lessons. He loved to spend his time talking to his teacher about history and geography., and to the town priest about music and Bible stories.
But in truth he was not happy with his studies, for he wanted to be able to read books and write letters like his classmates.
Then one day the schoolmaster told Louis about a school for the blind in Paris. It had a special kind of book that blind people could read, he said. Louis could hardly believe his ears. He begged his parents to send him to the wonderful school, and the village priest helped them find money to help pay the costs.
And so, when he was ten years old, Louis and his father traveled to Paris, where the boy enrolled in the National Institute for the Young Blind. As soon as he arrived, he asked his new teachers the question that was burning in his mind: “Can you teach me to read?”
He learned that the school was experimenting with a new way of teaching the blind to read. The Institute’s founder had printed some books with large, raised letters on the pages. By tracing the shape of the letters with their fingers, blind students could make out words and sentences.
It wasn’t long, however, before Louis discovered the shortcomings of this method. The raised letters were so large that even a very short story filled many pages. A single book might weigh hundreds of pounds! Tracing the fingers over the print was a clumsy process, so it took a long time for a blind person to read just a few paragraphs. And since the books were expensive to make, the school could afford to print only a few. It wasn’t long before Louis had read through its entire library.
Despite his disappointment in the cumbersome method, the boy from Coupvray studied hard and learned quickly. He especially loved music; with his keen hearing, quick fingers, and sharp memory he became a fine student of the piano and the cello. He loved spending his free hours at the organ in the nearby church, and before long he began playing for services there.
His love of music made him long more than ever for a better way to read. He wanted to be able to read not just words but musical notes as well. And he wanted to be able to write. Sometimes he lay awake at night thinking over the problem again and again.
“There must be a way,” he kept telling himself. “If blind people are to learn as much as everyone else, they must be able to read and write. I must find a way.”
Then one day He heard of an army captain named Charles Barbier who had invented a method to send messages in the dark. His “night writing” consisted of dots and dashes raised on paper; by running their fingers over the code, soldiers could read without using a light.
At once Louis recognized what such an idea meant. If a soldier could read and write messages in the dark, then a blind person could read and write too!
He went to question Monsieur Barbier. The captain was happy to demonstrate his system. He punched a few holes on a piece of paper with an awl, one similar to the very instrument that had destroyed Louis’s own sight. He turned the paper over, and showed his visitor how the marks made little bumps. Louis ran his fingers over the raised dots. Barbier explained how certain combinations of dots and dashes could make words and sentences.
Louis hurried back to the Institute and set to work. Night after night, month after month he worked with Barbier’s system, changing and refining. He knew the idea was sound, but he also knew the captain’s arrangement of dots and dashes was too cumbersome to be truly useful to the blind.
Like many new ideas and inventions, Louis’s work was viewed with suspicion. Some of the officials at the Institute resented his trying to change things. They had spent a small fortune printing their books with raised letters, and they saw no reason to change to a whole new system based on little bumps. They argued that a new writing invented solely for blind people would segregate them even more from the rest of society. They frowned on Louis’s efforts.
When he was seventeen years old, Louis became a teacher at the Institute. By day he taught his students to read using the older method of large, raised letters, but at night he continued to develop his new system. He would work until early morning hours, carefully punching holes, testing new patterns, searching for the right combinations, until he fell asleep in the midst of his tools and papers. Except for his beloved music, he gave all his spare time to the effort, always cheerful and brave and confident of success.
In 1829, by the time he was twenty years old, Louis arrived at his readable alphabet using various patterns of one to six raised dots. The Braille system was complete. He designed a little punch tool to write with, and after a while he could write almost as fast as someone could talk. He could even read and write music using his new system.
Word began to spread. Some of his students would come secretly to his room at night to learn the new method. Louis punched out his own books—Shakespeare and other classics—for them to read. After a while other blind people began to hear about the marvelous new method, and from all over the world the sent Louis letters asking about his invention.
And yet, sad to say, most people still could not see the importance of Braille’s new system. Some saw its value but did not care. Others were envious or resentful of the new method. Some of the teachers at the Institute, unwilling to try anything new, tried to make sure no one would ever learn to read using Braille’s dots.
But Louis went on refining and promoting his idea, hoping for the day when blind people all over the world would have the chance to read and write as he now could. He punched out more books and taught any blind person who was interested how to read them. He talked to anyone who would listen about his method, demonstrating it again and again, trying to rouse public interest.
And through all the days and nights of work, he wore himself out. His health began to fail, and for a while, it seemed as though the opportunity he had made for blind people might pass from the earth with him.
At last, however, his ideas found acceptance. Toward the end of his life, several places throughout Europe began to recognize the importance of Braille’s work, and more blind people began to discover his raised dots. The light was dawning. As he lay in a hospital bed a few weeks before his death, Louis said to a friend, “Oh, unsearchable mystery of the human heart! I am convinced that my mission on earth is finished.”
He died in 1852, just two days after his forty-third birthday.
In the years following Braille’s death, more and more blind people turned to his raised-dot system. The Braille method spread from country to country, at last becoming the accepted method of reading and writing for those who cannot see. At last books could become part of their lives, all because of a fifteen-year-old boy who devoted his own life to finding a better way.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be. –Matthew 6:23
Have an AWE-full Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque