Louis Braille

Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, a village near Paris, where his father made harnesses and saddles. At three he injured his eye with a sharp tool in his father's workshop; infection spread, and by five he was completely blind. At ten he won a place at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris. Its few books used large raised letters, which were heavy and slow to read. When Braille was twelve, an army captain, Charles Barbier, visited the school to show a system of raised dots he had designed so soldiers could read messages at night. Braille saw that it could be made simpler. By fifteen he had developed a code using cells of up to six dots, each small enough to be felt with one fingertip, for letters, numbers and punctuation, and he later added music notation. He became a teacher at the school and was much loved by his pupils. The school was slow to adopt his system officially. He suffered from tuberculosis and died in 1852, at forty-three. Braille is now used throughout the world.

Faith: A devout Catholic who served as church organist in Paris. Source: Wikipedia