On this day in medical history: Celebrating Louis Braille and World Braille Day

January 4 is World Braille Day, in honor of Louis Braille, inventor of the braille code, who was born in Coupvray, France, on January 4, 1809.

When he was 3, Louis injured his eye on an awl while playing in his father’s harness shop. The eye became infected, and even with the best available care, the infection spread to his other eye and left him completely blind. Despite his blindness, Braille was an excellent student, and received a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris when he was 10.

At the time, blind and visually impaired people had no way of reading, except by tracing embossed print letters with their fingers. The process was slow because it required memorization of the shapes of letters and then reproducing them on paper without seeing them or being able to “read” what was written.

Inspiration for Louis Braille’s system came to him after he learned of Charles Barbier, a retired artillery officer in Napoleon’s army, and the note-taking system he invented for soldiers. The rationale behind the system was to allow notes to be passed among soldiers without a light, which may have given away their position to the enemy.

The ”night writing” system was a code of 12 raised dots representing sounds that enabled soldiers to share top secret information on the battlefield. The code was rejected by the army, and Barbier took his system to the school for the blind. Braille was inspired and spent the next 3 years refining Barbier’s idea.

Braille worked to improve Barbier’s system by reducing the 12 dots into 6 and his system was finally ready in 1824. In 1829, Braille published a written account of his system, and published the first braille book. In 1837, he published a second written account, which featured an expanded system that included symbols for math and music.

Braille’s fellow students liked the system, and King Louis Phillipe of France publicly praised it in 1834. But instructors and school board members worried that the growing numbers of well-educated blind people would take jobs away from the sighted, and decided to stick with the previous embossed-letter system.

Despite Braille’s best efforts, the braille system wasn’t accepted or taught until after his death, and only began to spread throughout the world in 1868. It is still in use today in almost every country in the world, and has been adapted to nearly every known language.

Braille spent his life teaching, researching, and inventing and became well known as a musician, composer, and instructor. Braille contracted tuberculosis in 1835 and had to resign from teaching. He died on January 6, 1852 at the age of 43.

Today, technological advances have made braille available to blind and visually impaired people in many different ways. Perhaps the most wondrous is braille display technology, which provides access to information on a computer screen in braille. Also called braille readers, these electronic devices enable someone to read text displayed on a computer monitor. The computer sends text on the screen to an output device, where it is converted to braille and rounded pins are raised or lowered to present the text. The output device is usually placed underneath a computer keyboard.

Braille printers and electronic braille notetakers are also available. Braille notetakers are small devices with braille keyboards. Output is generated either via a speech synthesizer or a braille display.

Most recently, a new Smartwatch with a braille display has been developed. Named Dot, it features a rolling four-letter display that allows users to tell time, get notifications, and read messages. Buttons on the side are for accepting calls.

Had Louis Braille known what technology would do for his braille system, he would have surely been astounded. Celebrate World Braille Day, in honor of the man who helped bring the written word to those who could not otherwise see it.