Louis Braille, who created the writing system so widely used by visually impaired people across the world was born in the small French of Coupvray on this day in 1809. He lost his sight after an injury in his parents' workshop and was blind by the age of five. Remarkably, just a decade later while still studying at the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, he would first share his tactile writing system that used six-dot combinations to symbolize letters and punctuation symbols. The Braille system was quickly adopted by the school, enabling the students to read and write much faster.
He first encountered a raised-dot writing system when retired army officer Charles Barbier showed students his 12-dot messaging system, intended for the surreptitious passing of messages between soldiers at night. He made the symbols simpler and smaller to make them easier to read, 64 in total. Braille would pass away at just 43 years old, but his writing system continued to grow in popularity in the decades that followed. He became well-known enough that his hometown erected a monument dedicated to him in 1887.
The use of the Braille system ramped up significantly at the start of the 20th century, and over the following decades it was adapted for use in other languages. Nowadays it's common across the world, with nearly every language having some way of writing in it.
You can learn more about Braille, and the context in which he created his writing system, on the website of the Musée Louis Braille, which is located in his childhood home.
