Braille Born: Inventor Who Gave the Blind Literacy
He blinded himself at three, playing with an awl in his father's harness workshop in Coupvray, France. An infection spread to both eyes. At ten, he got a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris. At fifteen, a visiting soldier showed him a military communication system using raised dots. Braille spent three years redesigning it for reading and writing. He finished his alphabet at eighteen. The school he attended refused to teach it for years after he invented it.
January 4, 1809
217 years ago
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