The "A Young Inventor Overcomes His Handicap" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Visiting with friends Jere and Just Sue in State College, Pennsylvania.  Jere, Sue and I were all in the same graduating class from Manheim Township High School (MTHS) in Lancaster, PA.  Jere and Sue dated in high school and later  married and I met my wife Carol four years after I graduated from high school.  Jere and I went back to MTHS to teach Industrial Arts together.  He then became the Head of Grounds for the school district.  We both retired the same year and along with out wives have been traveling together for the past 20 years.  After Jere retired he and Sue moved to State College where Sue grew up.  So, Carol and I now make a few visits a year to State College for visits and they in turn travel back to Lancaster for visits.  Sunday morning a few weeks ago saw the four of us heading out for breakfast in State College.  Tried the Waffle House close to their house, but that was packed.  Tried the other Waffle House in State College, but were met with a large line outside the restaurant.  

Page of Braille writing.

We ended up at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant.  After a short wait we were seated and Jere asked for a menu with large letters which is easier for us old guys to read.  Part of the menu was printed, or embossed, in braille.  I ran my hand over the letters and realized just how lucky I am to be able to read a normal menu.  Our breakfast was excellent and later that day, after returning to Lancaster, I dug out a story that I had saved from our local newspaper's "The Mini Page" which told of the young inventor, Louis Braille.  Interesting story about a boy who, at the age of 3 climbed up on his father's workbench and tried to make a hole in a piece of leather as his father had done many times while he watched.  

House where Louis Braille was born in 1809 in Coupvray, France.

The tool slipped and struck him in the right eye.  It later became infected and soon spread to the left eye.  By the time he was 5 he was totally blind.  He was a bright boy and his parents tried to teach him the best they could.  His father made him a cane so he could maneuver around the local town of Coupvray in France.  He eventually began his formal education with the local priest who after realizing how intelligent he was, suggested he join other children at a village school.  Then the priest learned of a special school in Paris called the Institute for Blind Youth and he arranged for Louis to attend when he was 10 years old.  

Louis Braille

The school's founder, Valetin Haüy had invented a system for reading called embossing.  He learned the technique of reading, but the books were very large and heavy as well as expensive to print.  A retired military man visited the school one day demonstrated a system he had developed for soldiers to use to communicate in the dark, called nightwriting.   His system used dashes and dots to represent different sounds.  Louis found it interesting, but it didn't have symbols for punctuation.  He then worked on a fingertip-sized six-dot code, based on the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, which could be recognized with a single contact of one finger.  By changing the number and placement of dots, he coded letters, punctuation, numbers, familiar words, scientific symbols, mathematical and Musial notation and capitalization.  

The six-dot code for letters, numbers
and punctuation.

The reader used their right hand to touch individual dots, and with the left hand moved on toward the next line, grasping the text as smoothly and rapidly as sighted readers.  Using the Braille system, as it became known, students were also able to take notes and write themes by punching dots into paper with a pointed instrument that was lined up with a metal guide.  At the age of 20, Louis published a written account of his coded system.  In 1834 King Louis Philippe praised the system after a demonstration at the Paris Exposition of Industry.  Braille's fellow students loved the system, but the sighted instructors began to worry that they may lose their jobs to blind people and abandoned the system for the embossed-letter system.  In 1835 Braille became seriously ill with tuberculosis.  

The dollar coin was issued in the United States in 2009
to honor Louis Braille on his bicentennial birthday.

Shortly before his death a blind musician gave a performance in Paris and made a point of telling the audience she learned everything she knew using the forgotten system developed by the now-dead Mr. Braille.  This renewed interest in Braille's system and led to the revival of the Braille system although it wasn't fully accepted until 1854, two year's after the inventor's death.  The version of Braille used today in the United States was first used in 1860 at the Missouri School for the Blind.  For those of us who are lucky enough to have normal vision, we would never be able to understand just how hard it is communicate through the use of Braille.  The menu I had run my fingers across made me realize that. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.