Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille

Braille excels at school, quickly moving from elementary to more advanced classes. His family and prior teachers are impressed with his knowledge and achievements when he visits home.

In Braille’s third year, a retired artillery captain, Charles Barbier, visits the school. Barbier invented and pioneered a code called nightwriting, which allows French commanders to convey messages using simple codes of raised dots and dashes. These can be interpreted in the dark.

Barbier visits Dr Andre Pignier, the director of Braille’s school, to discuss the utility of a similar system for people who are blind. Barbier suggests that combinations of dots and dashes could indicate sounds. Pignier is open to the boys trying out the system, called sonography. Many of the boys, including Braille and his friend Gaunthier, are excited, and begin using the system to write and read. However, many are discouraged that reading is still slow and awkward—the words are long and there is no allowance for spelling or punctuation. Braille begins experimenting. Pignier sets up a meeting with Braille and Barbier, but the military commander is obstinate and doesn’t want his system changed; Barbier insists that sonography is an excellent method of reading and writing for the blind.  

Braille is discouraged by Barbier’s reluctance to consider modifications to his system. He continues experimenting in private with systems of dots and dashes. He is reinspired when Valentin Hauy, the founder of the school, visits. Braille and Hauy shake hands. It is a powerful moment for Braille; he feels that he is being “passed along a torch” (42). Hauy speaks to the boys and describes his lifetime of advocacy for the blind, often characterized by setbacks and discouragement.

Braille remains determined to create a system using the stylus-created dots and dashes, often working obsessively all night as his classmates sleep. He aims to create a system which can be easily read with the touch of a finger; the embossed letters and sonography are both too onerous to interpret or create quickly.

He has a breakthrough: using letters of the alphabet rather than sounds, as in Barbier’s sonography system. At fifteen years old, Braille develops a simple system where a series of dots represents each letter of the alphabet. Braille shows this system to Pignier in the fall term of 1824. As directed by Braille, Pignier dictates a passage from a book and Braille quickly records his words using his dots and dashes system; Braille then traces his finger over what he had recorded and repeats the entire passage perfectly.

Pignier is astounded. He encourages Braille to share his alphabet system with the rest of the school. Soon the other boys and teachers are using it. Braille continues to hone it, eventually eliminating dashes so that the system relies entirely upon dots. Braille then creates a device to quickly and neatly produce his alphabet using a slate, a sliding rule, stylus, and paper. After he graduates, Braille remains at the school as a teacher of grammar, geography, and arithmetic.

The Braille cell, a collection of six possible dots (in three rows of two), can be felt within a single fingertip. It denotes a single letter of the alphabet—depending on which dots are raised. Braille’s system of reading and writing becomes known as braille.