Word of the Day: April 24, 2009 ~ braille

braille (breyl) - noun

Braille is "a system of writing or printing, devised by Louis Braille for use by the blind, in which combinations of tangible dots or points are used to represent letters, characters, etc., that are read by touch."

In the year 1812, a little French boy, Louis Braille, was blinded. He learned his alphabet at a school for the blind by feeling twigs that were fashioned in the shape of letters, but he was hungry for knowledge and impatient with this awkward technique. One day when he was older, he heard of a French Army captain who had devised a system of raised dots and dashes by which his orders could be read by the fingers in the dark - simple symbols such as one dot for advance, two for retreat.  It was from this beginning that Louis Braille developed what is now known as the Braille system of printing for the blind. He published treatises on his system in 1829 and 1837.

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