Braille, Louis (1809-1852), French inventor of braille and Professor of Institute of the Blind, Paris

1 personal typescript from Louis Braille to Monsieur Edouard Agret, dated Paris 1846, written in French. The letter is accompanied by another item handwritten in French, on one side it reads 'Braille lettre d'aveugle' (Braille letter of blind).

1846

1 file (2 items)

Purchased from: Stevens, London, September 1930 (acc.73198).

Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, Franc in 1809. At the age of three, Braille was involved in an accident in his father's workshop and by five years old he lost sight in both his eyes due to a related infection. He continued to live a relatively normal life, studying in Coupvray until he was 10, and was premitted to attend one of the first schools for blind children in the world, the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris where he eventually became a Professor.

Braille was determined to fashion a system of reading and writing that could bridge the critical gap in communication between the sighted and the blind and went on to invent the Braille system - a method of reading and writing for visually impared people. Although variations of Braille are widespread today, his system wasonly adopted by the Institute in 1854, two years after his death.

Notably, in 1839, Braille published details of a method he had developed for communication with sighted people, using patterns of dots to approximate the shape of printed symbols. His friend, Pierre Foucault, invented a device that could emboss letters in the manner of a typewriter, which is possibly how this letter was written.

Braille returned to his family home in Coupvray as his illness thought to be tuberculosis) worsened and he died in 1852.