Biography Zone

Louis Braille

Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809 at Coupvray, a small town near Paris, France. He lives with his father, Simon Rene Braille and his mother, Monique, in a modest house. His father was a shoemaker and leather gear that worked in the workshop of his own. Little Louis love playing in his father's workshop. At the age of 4 years, while fun to play working tools of his father, he had an accident. Jara, a sharp tool to puncture the skin, accidentally injuring an eye.

Infection in the injured eye in quickly spread to the other eye and cause blindness in both eyes.

Although I could not see, little Louis managed to show a strong willingness to learn. Parents Louis with local school teachers saw great potential in him. Therefore, when entering school age, he was allowed to attend the class - with her friends who berpenglihatan normal - by relying on the sense of hearing. Apparently, he could follow the lessons well. The only obstacle, he can not read and write except to the extent the lesson to listen to what the teacher orally.

At age 10, he obtained a scholarship to study at the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris, a special educational institution for blind children. There, he learned to read letters embossed on paper by merabanya. At this school there are also several books with embossed system provided by the school's founder, Valentin Haüy. These books contain large letters embossed on each page. Due to the size of the letters are large, the size of the book was fairly large, so the price is very expensive. School only has 14 books such as this.

Young Louis patiently managed to "gobble up" all the books in the school library. Louis Braille can feel each embossed lettering on the books, but it is quite time-consuming to read and understand every sentence. It takes a few seconds to identify a word and when it has reached the end of a sentence, he often forgot what he had read at the beginning of the sentence. Louis believes there must be an easier way so that the blind can read quickly and easily as one can see.

One day in 1821, a French army captain, Charles Barbier, visiting schools Louis. Barbier presented his findings, called night writing (writing the night), a code that allows forces to share secret information on the battlefield without having to speak or turn on the flashlight to read it. This code consists of 12 raised dots that can be combined to represent letters and can be felt by the fingertips.

Unfortunately, the code is too complex for the majority of his troops that formally rejected for use in his unit, but not for 12-year-old blind student, Louis Braille. Young Louis soon realized how the point system arises it will be very useful if he manages to simplify it. After the visit Barbier, he seriously experimented with generating systems raised different points. In three years, at age 15, he eventually managed to build an ideal system now called wide, using a 6 cell based point and normal spelling.

Code braille

No. He even continued to develop this system in the following years and successfully added symbols for math and music. In 1829, Louis Braille published the Method of Writing Words, Music and Plain Song by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged by Them, the first braille book ever published in the world. The blind read Braille by moving their fingertips over the raised dots that. They can write on a wide range of paper over a 6 key called braillewriter (braille writer) using stytus, such devices without ink pens pointy edges.

Finally, Louis Braille became a teacher at the school where he was once a pupil, Royal Institusion for Blind Youth. He was a teacher who liked and respected his students. But unfortunately, he did not get to see a read-write system findings are used widely throughout the world. On January 6, 1852, at age 43, he died of tuberculosis.

At first, people did not think that the braille code is something useful for the visually impaired. Many people who suspect braille system was going to die as the inventor. Thankful there are few people realize the importance of the discovery of Louis Braille. In 1868, Dr. Thomas Armitage led a group of visually impaired people - consisting of four people - set up institutions to develop and disseminate the findings of Louis Braille system. This small group continues to grow and evolve into the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), now known as the largest publisher of books range in Europe. Louis Braille brilliant inventions have changed the world of reading and writing for the blind forever. Now, the braille code has been adapted into nearly every written language in the world. Louis has proven that with a strong motivation, we can do things that previously did not make sense. ***

Geri Achmadi
Books Editor, Alumni Faculty Unpad