Inventor of Braille?
From: "Alaisa"
Who invented braille??? it's not really that stupid
I just want to know
So after the long awaited responses heres what
we've come up with:
dartman12 answered with this and sent us a
website:
The Inventor of braille was Louis
Braille.
click here
David K agreed with darman12 and sent us this
link:
That's an easy one: Louis Braille
Here's a link:
click
It took me 10 seconds to find it on Google.com by typing in +Braille
+inventor
Orphan added this information:
The Braille language was invented by a Frenchman by
the name of Louis Braille. He was blinded while young by an awl
which his father used in his shoemaking shop. Interestingly he used
a similar tool to make the impressions on the page for his new
'writing'.
C++gUrU disagreed with the above and stated this:
Its popular belief that Louis Braille
invented the Braille lettering system. Not true. In 1821 a soldier
named Charles Barbier came to visit the school. He bought with him a
system he had invented called 'night writing'. Barbier had designed
it for Napoleon; who wanted a secret code that could be used at
night. It proved to be too complex for soldiers to learn and was
rejected by the army. Louis Braille realized how useful this system
of raised dots could be for the Blind. He set to work simplifying
it. His system used six dots instead of the 12 used in Barbier's
code.
Trace did a little research:
Louis Braille didn't invent Braille. As
a boy he attended a school for the Blind in Paris, He learned how to
read but not to write. Back then Blind People learned how to read
raised letters with their fingertips. This form of writing was very
difficult to read. In 1821 a soldier named Charles Barbier came to
visit the school. He bought with him a system he had invented called
'night writing'. Barbier had designed it for Napoleon; who wanted a
secret code that could be used at night. It proved to be too complex
for soldiers to learn and was rejected by the army. Louis Braille
realized how useful this system of raised dots could be for the
Blind. He set to work simplifying it. His system used six dots
instead of the 12 used in Barbier's code. Now Blind people could
learn to read as well as write.
martinis00 reported this story:
There was a time, not long ago,
when most people thought that blind people could never learn to
read. People thought that the only way to read was to look at words
with your eyes.
A young French boy named Louis Braille thought otherwise. Blind from
the age of three, young Louis desperately wanted to read. He
realized the vast world of thought and ideas that was locked out to
him because of his disability. And he was determined to find the key
to this door for himself, and for all other blind persons.
This story begins in the early part of the nineteenth century. Louis
Braille was born in 1809, in a small village near Paris. His father
made harnesses and other leather goods to sell to the other
villagers. Louis' father often used sharp tools to cut and punch
holes in the leather.
One of the tools he used to makes holes was a sharp awl. An awl is a
tool that looks like a short pointed stick, with a round, wooden
handle. While playing with one of his father's awls, Louis' hand
slipped and he accidentally poked one of his eyes. At first the
injury didn't seem serious, but then the wound became infected. A
few days later young Louis lost sight in both his eyes. The first
few days after becoming blind were very hard.
But as the days went by Louis learned to adapt and learned to lead
an otherwise normal life. He went to school with all his friends and
did well at his studies. He was both intelligent and creative. He
wasn't going to let his disability slow him down one bit.
As he grew older, he realized that the small school he attended did
not have the money and resources he needed. He heard of a school in
Paris that was especially for blind students. Louis didn't have to
think twice about going. He packed his bags and went off to find
himself a solid education.
When he arrived at the special school for the blind, he asked his
teacher if the school had books for blind persons to read. Louis
found that the school did have books for the blind to read.
These books had large letters that were raised up off the page.
Since the letters were so big, the books themselves were large and
bulky. More importantly, the books were expensive to buy. The school
had exactly fourteen of them.
Louis set about reading all fourteen books in the school library. He
could feel each letter, but it took him a long time to read a
sentence. It took a few seconds to reach each word and by the time
he reached the end of a sentence, he almost forgot what the
beginning of the sentence was about. Louis knew there must be a
better way.
There must be a way for a blind person to quickly feel the words on
a page. There must be a way for a blind person to read as quickly
and as easily as a sighted person.
That day he set himself the goal of thinking up a system for blind
people to read. He would try to think of some alphabet code to make
his 'finger reading' as quick and easy as sighted reading.
Now Louis was a tremendously creative person. He learned to play the
cello and organ at a young age. He was so talented an organist that
he played at churches all over Paris.
Music was really his first love. It also happened to be a steady
source of income. Louis had great confidence in his own creative
abilities.
He knew that he was as intelligent and creative as any other person
his own age. And his musical talent showed how much he could
accomplish when given a chance.
One day chance walked in the door. Somebody at the school heard
about an alphabet code that was being used by the French army. This
code was used to deliver messages at night from officers to
soldiers. The messages could not be written on paper because the
soldier would have to strike a match to read it.
The light from the match would give the enemy a target at which to
shoot. The alphabet code was made up of small dots and dashes. These
symbols were raised up off the paper so that soldiers could read
them by running their fingers over them. Once the soldiers
understood the code, everything worked fine.
Louis got hold of some of this code and tried it out. It was much
better than reading the gigantic books with gigantic raised letters.
But the army code was still slow and cumbersome. The dashes took up
a lot of space on a page. Each page could only hold one or two
sentences. Louis knew that he could improve this alphabet in some
way.
On his next vacation home, he would spend all his time working on
finding a way to make this improvement. When he arrived home for
school vacation, he was greeted warmly by his parents.
His mother and father always encouraged him on his music and other
school projects. Louis sat down to think about how he could improve
the system of dots and dashes. He liked the idea of the raised dots,
but could do without the raised dashes.
As he sat there in his father's leather shop, he picked up one of
his father's blunt awls. The idea came to him in a flash. The very
tool which had caused him to go blind could be used to make a raised
dot alphabet that would enable him to read.
The next few days he spent working on an alphabet made up entirely
of six dots. The position of the different dots would represent the
different letters of the alphabet.
Louis used the blunt awl to punch out a sentence. He read it quickly
from left to right. Everything made sense. It worked...
Brent agreed with C++gUrU:
Who invented Braille --? ==== answer -
Louis Braille didn't invent Braille. As a boy he attended a school
for the Blind in Paris, He learned how to read but not to write.
Back then Blind People learned how to read raised letters with their
fingertips. This form of writing was very difficult to read. In 1821
a soldier named Charles Barbier came to visit the school. He bought
with him a system he had invented called 'night writing'. Barbier
had designed it for Napoleon; who wanted a secret code that could be
used at night. It proved to be too complex for soldiers to learn and
was rejected by the army. Louis Braille realized how useful this
system of raised dots could be for the Blind. He set to work
simplifying it. His system used six dots instead of the 12 used in
Barbier's code. Now Blind people could learn to read as well as
write.
Sam concluded with:
a nineteenth-century Frenchman named Louis Braille,
accidentally blinded as a child, who originated the raised dot
system of reading and writing used by the blind throughout the
world.
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