Meet Louis Braille

By James

Below is the second in a series of biographies from Mrs. Yollis' Class. Each student researched a person, wrote an informative report, and created a sculpture of the historic person.

This pictures shows Louis Braille's brilliant invention used at our school.

I created a beautiful biography about Louis Braille, who is famous for inventing raphigraphy. Raphigraphy is a raised dot system (also known as Braille) so the blind can feel it, and the people who aren’t blind can see it. To go with the biography, I made a dazzling scupture of this character. Please enjoy the surprisingfacts about Louis Braille.

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Meet Louis Braille

Do you know who invented raphigraphy? If you guesses Louis Braille, you are correct. Louis Braille was born on January 4, 1809, in Coupvray, France. Louis became blind by poking his eye with a dangerous tool. Eventually, in 1812, his eye became infected, and his infection to his other eye causing total blindness at the age of three.

Also in the early 1800s, France was at war with Russia. When Russia won, they invaded Coupvray and demanded to be housed and fed. Louis’s house now had Russian soldiers in it. As you can imagine living with soldiers was tough, considering young Louis can’t even see them.

In 1819 Louis was sent to live and learn at a blind institute. In this new school, Louis learned sonography, a raised dot system for soldiers so they didn’t need a lamp to read a message during war. Later, in 1825, Louis and his friend invented the first blind writing board so the blind could write too. The writing board was like a 3-D array of squares to help form something similar to a letter. A year, in 1826, Mr. Braille became a teacher for the blind institute.

In 1839, Mr. Louis Braille invented raphigraphy. Raphigraphy is raised dots symbolizing letters so the blind can feel them and the people who aren’t blind could see them. Raphigraphy today is also known as Braille. Unfortunately, Mr. Braille died on January 6, 1852, in Coupvray, France. Louis died from a horrible coughing disease called tuberculosis. Louis Braille was only 42 when he died and I wish he was still alive right now to see all of his success.

I enjoy learning about Mr. Braille’s system and I am happy it is still used today. Raphigraphy is even used here at my school. I think his six dot system, raphigaphy, changed the world because it made it easier for the blind to read and enjoy books as much as the people who aren’t blind.

Below is a presentation of my sculpture of Mr. Braille.

What do you think of James' report?
Do you have any questions for him?
Please comment!