“learning to read music in braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory."
Ray Charles, musician
Louis Braille (1809-1852) was fifteen years old when he devised a system of raised dots to reproduce the alphabet so that it could be read by touch. Braille became blind at the age of four as a. result of an accident while playing in his father's saddler workshop and was educated at the National Institute for Blind Children in Paris from the age of ten. He learned to read using raised wooden letters designed by the school's founder, Valentin Hauy.
In 1821, Charles Barbier, a former captain in the French Army, visited the school. Braille was introduced to the letter code that Barbier had developed to enable soldiers to communicate, without sound or light at night. Barbier's system used large symbols to represent sounds, each using dots and dashes raised on paper. The reader had to move his finger around to recognize the sounds.
Braille realized that compact symbols readable by one touch of .the finger would be quicker and more reliable and would make it possible to write without sight. By 1824 he had developed a system of identically shaped cells, each with the space for six raised dots arranged in a regular rectangle. Each letter and digit is represented by a unique pattern of dots using this grid—sixty-four combinations are possible—and the sequence of patterns is systematic to facilitate learning. Braille refined and tested the system, developed patterns for mathematical and musical notation, and published his Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Song by Means of Dots i n 1829.
Braille, who became a teacher at the Institute for Blind Children, later developed the system further so that sighted people could recognize the letters. He also collaborated on the development of a machine to speed up the writing process.
