Boy’s Invention Endures

by Jesse Perry

Louis counted the chairs, brushing each with his fingers as he passed, until he found his assigned seat. All around him he heard the scrape of wooden chair legs on the stone floor and the muttered counting of other students as each found his place and seated himself at the long table. Louis wondered again what this table actually looked like. Was it anything like the benches where his father made harnesses? He also wondered why this meeting had been called.

~

          On January 4, 1809, Monique Baron, wife of Simon René Braille, gave birth to a son and named him Louis. Simon was a harness maker in the small town of Coupvray, France, and no sooner could Louis toddle than he was in the harness shop. Louis was surely a nuisance with his inquisitive nature, but Simon must have adored Louis’ company for Louis was often found there.

          The tools of a harness maker are designed to work the toughest leathers; on Simon Braille’s workbench were an assortment of knives, awls and chisels—potentially dangerous for adults and certainly not toys for a three-year-old. But one day, finding his parents out of sight, little Louis slipped unseen into the harness shop. Approaching the workbench, he stood on the tips of his toes and groped among the debris atop the bench. His pudgy fingers happened upon a scrap of leather and a stitching awl. Settling down onto the dusty floor, he tried to pierce the leather with the awl.

 Suddenly his hand slipped and drove the awl into his eye. As Louis wailed in pain and terror, help was at his side in an instant, but the damage had been done. Doctors were called, but infection set in, and within weeks, Louis was totally blind.

          Once the pain faded, Louis went back to being a cheerful child, but Simon Braille must have been haunted by his son’s condition. He nearly bankrupted his family in seeking care for Louis. Unfortunately, nineteenth-century France had few resources to offer children who were blind.

~

          Drawing back his chair, Louis sank into it and rested his arms on the table.

          “Louis,” a familiar voice called softly to him. It was Gauthier, his best friend.

          “Yes, Gauthier, I hear,” he replied.

          “Why do you suppose Doctor Pignier is presiding over this assembly?”

          “I’ve heard he is bringing a guest to speak to us—something about Monsieur Haüy’s raised letters.”

          Another voice broke in. “I heard that Monsieur Haüy’s raised-letter system is being challenged since he was dismissed from the college by Director Guillié.”

          “That’s absurd!” Louis cried. “Are we to learn all of literature by memory?”

~

          By November 1818, the Abbé Palluy, had been teaching Louis for several years, and he was pleased that the 9-year-old was excelling in his studies. The boy was intelligent and inquisitive, and remained at the head of his class, but Monsieur Palluy knew that, without being able to read, Louis’ education would soon end. Simon Braille met with M. Palluy one cold November day to discuss Louis’ future. As the anxious father pleaded with the Abbé to find help for his son, Palluy decided he would approach the lord of the local manor, Monsieur d’Orvilliers.

          Some time before, M. d’Orvilliers had attended a meeting at Versailles given by Valentin Haüy before the King and Queen. Haüy had developed a system by which Roman letters were embossed into paper, allowing them to be read by the fingertips. He demonstrated that pupils taught by his method could read and do arithmetic. M. d’Orvilliers and many of the royals in attendance contributed heavily to establish a school where students who were blind might be taught using Haüy’s method. Given Louis’ exceptional learning abilities, M. d’Orvilliers was happy to sponsor the boy to attend the Royal Institution for Blind Youth.

~

          “Haüy’s raised letters have been proven,” Gauthier insisted.

Louis frowned. Grief welled up as he recalled standing by Valentin Haüy’s deathbed; the memory was still fresh. However, Louis had struggled with the old man’s system. He knew that many had difficulty distinguishing the curves of one letter from those of another. Simple shapes were easy to distinguish with the fingers, but the shapes of many letters were complex. The edges tended to run together in incomprehensible lumps beneath his fingers.

          The murmur of student conversation hushed as the sound of two pairs of shoes resonated off the stone floor. Doctor Pignier was still new to the college, and Louis was still learning to identify his stride. The other person was a stranger.

          “Good morning, pupils,” Doctor Pignier said. “Please welcome Monsieur Barbier. He has developed a system of raised writing that shows promise. I would like to see if it will be useful in our studies. As many of you know, Doctor Haüy’s raised letters are often cumbersome and difficult to read.”

          A discontented murmur rippled through the room.

          Doctor Pignier paused, then continued. “Doctor Haüy has blessed us all with his raised letters, and we will always remember him fondly, but Monsieur Barbier’s system offers some advantages that might be of benefit to us all.”

          Now a different voice spoke. “Good morning pupils. I am Charles Barbier de la Serre. The pages I am placing in front of you are embossed with a system of dots and dashes I call Sonography. If you will run your fingers over the pages, you will find it easy to distinguish one symbol from another.”

~

          Sonography was part alphabet, part syllabary; a symbol could represent a letter or a syllable. A single character might be made up of as many as twelve dots. Cumbersome in practice, the system was more like shorthand. It lacked punctuation, accents, numbers, and mathematical symbols. But Barbier’s invention eliminated curved smooth lines in favor of raised dots. It was an improvement.

~

          Louis’ heart fluttered in his chest as he ran his fingers over the raised symbols. As Barbier said, it was a simple thing for his fingers to distinguish between the raised pricks in the paper that formed dots and dashes. But Barbier’s system was still difficult— twelve dots and a multitude of dashes. Louis’ agile brain began to play with Barbier’s dots and dashes.

~

          Louis and Gauthier soon learned Sonography, as did most of their fellow pupils. The depth and breadth of their education increased with each new use they found for Barbier’s system. Nevertheless, at night, when his studies were over, Louis would experiment. By the time he was 15, Louis had whittled Barbier’s complex system down to a mere six dots per character. Each symbol or cell was a rectangle which contained six possible dot positions in two columns.

~

          In his office, Dr. Pignier listened with growing fascination as Louis described the changes he had made in Barbier’s system. In practice, the new writing only resembled the old in that it used embossed dots.

          His demonstration finished, Louis stood, uncertain whether the silence was approval or dismay. “I apologize if I sound ungrateful to M. Barbier,” he said. “I credit him with my discovery; he gave us something great. Our beloved Valentin Haüy’s embossed letters were an attempt to connect sight with blindness, but Barbier’s invention is the first thing that we can make our own, and that’s what I’ve tried to do.” He paused, trembling with excitement and fear. What would he do if Dr. Pignier responded negatively? Was he strong enough to promote his system all by himself? Then he heard a rush and found himself caught up in the embrace of the director.

“Louis,” said Dr. Pignier, “you have given us something great. I would be honored to introduce your changes to our curriculum. I will have the students’ slide rules converted so that they can begin learning your new system at once, but you must promise me something.”

          “Promise?”

          “You must promise that you will not become complacent. There will be resistance, and some may find flaws in your system. Promise me that you will never hang your heart on your invention, that you will never stop making it better.”

          Louis frowned. “How could I do otherwise?”

~

          Louis Braille’s new system quickly proved itself to the pupils of the Royal Institution. Louis continued to perfect his writing, eventually developing a method for music notation, as well. Louis’ fellow students found that a new wealth of learning opportunities was opening before them. However, though Dr. Pignier was an eager promoter, Braille’s system met with resistance. Perhaps some teachers felt their positions of authority were threatened by the ease with which pupils of the Royal Institution could teach themselves. Other systems of writing had more powerful backers than did Braille’s system. Some who were not in outright opposition seemed only to care enough to offer patronizing encouragement.

 Charles Barbier continued to harass Dr. Pignier, certain that his Sonography was superior. In 1840 internal politics deprived Braille, who was now teaching at the Royal Institution, of his most ardent supporter. Dr. Pignier was removed from the college faculty. The new director immediately sought to revert to the use of Haüy’s and Barbier’s systems.

          With enemies on every side, Braille’ most staunch supporters were his students. They had used the braille method and knew its advantages, so even while they were forced to learn other systems, they took notes using braille. When a period of ill health forced Braille to take a six-month sabbatical from teaching, Director Dufau’s efforts to completely remove the braille system from the Institution merely drove it underground.

          In 1843, the school was moved from the ancient halls on St. Victor Street to new buildings at number 56 Boulevard des Invalides. No longer would students be plagued with the tuberculous ailments that festered among the moldering stones.

          Even before the move, Director Dufau, wearying of the endless battles, had hired a friend, Joseph Guadet, to be his assistant. Guadet recognized the virtues of braille. At the inaugural opening of the new buildings, Guadet, speaking for the director, spoke of the superiority of braille, thus bringing to an end the years-long struggle. Stubbornness and covert learning had finally worn the director down, and he needed only the nudge of his young assistant to admit defeat.

         And now Braille’s greatest opponent became his greatest proponent. As tuberculosis gradually drained Louis’ strength, Dufau took up the banner. By his efforts a press for the mass reproduction of braille was developed and put to use. People who were blind had Dufau to thank for the printing method by which braille books became available to them personally, rather than simply at an Institution library.

         Braille took great satisfaction in the advancement of his invention even as his health continued its decline. On January 6, 1852 Louis Braille died, but braille continued to gain momentum throughout Europe. Other methods faded into obscurity for an obvious reason: braille was elegant in its simplicity—six dots, two columns, 64 permutations. Children could read and write in braille. Students could take notes in class. Books could be printed on large presses.

In 1878, delegates from all over the world met in Paris to adopt braille as the international system of writing for those who were blind. In 1917, the United States joined the braille community. In 1950, UNESCO initiated a move to adapt braille for African dialects.

         Now, in the 200^th anniversary year of Louis Braille’s birth, readers continue to benefit from his invention. By reassigning the alphabet characters of other languages to the standard braille cells, any language can be converted to be read in braille.

         But perhaps the greatest beauty of Louis Braille’s invention is that it all began when a twelve-year-old boy started poking holes in paper with an awl like the one that had robbed him of his sight.

 

Jesse Perry is a freelance writer living in Fortuna, California. He notes that he utilized several sources in preparing this story, and is especially indebted to the book Seeing Fingers: The Story of Louis Braille by Etta DeGering (1962).