BRAILLE, LOUIS. - Born at Coupvray (Seine-et-Marne) on 4 Jan. 1809 and died in Paris on 6 Jan. 1852. Blind, he devoted himself to the education of his companions in misfortune, inventing for them the system of writing that took its name from him.
Such was his progress at the Institute for the Blind in Paris in the study of letters, music and mathematics that in 1826 he was called to teach there, successively, grammar, geometry, geography, history, algebra and arithmetic.
Dissatisfied with the Haüy system then in use for reading by the blind, he set about searching for a new system, and found it by reforming that of Barbier, who with twelve dots arranged in different ways within a given space formed the various letters of the alphabet. B. reduced the dots to 6 and distributed them in three series of ten letters each.
The table of these can be given here:
BRAILLE LOUIS - Signs of B.'s writing.
With the same signs then applied to musical notation, he succeeded in transcribing musical works, rendering the blind, who can do much in the field of music, a great service.
His system could be officially adopted at the Institute for the Blind in Paris only in 1854, and it then spread to almost all parts of the world.
Bibliography4 worksL. Vitali, Istruzione e pedagogia dei ciechi (entry Ciechi) in A. Martinazzoli and L. Credaro, Dizionario illustrato di Pedagogia, I, Milan
BIBL.: L. Vitali, Istruzione e pedagogia dei ciechi (entry Ciechi) in A. Martinazzoli and L. Credaro, Dizionario illustrato di Pedagogia, I, Milan n.d., pp. 281-93; G. Gerner, Blindenschrift, in Das Kind und die Schule, Leipzig 1914; P. Villey, Le monde des aveugles, Paris 1918; id., Pédagogie des aveugles, ibid. 1922.
Sammartano, Nino. “Braille, louis.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. III, coll. 12–13. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949. https://azioneromana.com/article/braille-louis.
MLA
Sammartano, Nino. “Braille, louis.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. III, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949, coll. 12–13. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/braille-louis.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec3_braille_louis,
author = {Sammartano, Nino},
title = {Braille, louis},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {III},
pages = {12--13},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1949},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/braille-louis}
}
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