Out of Darkness: Chapters 5–8

When he went home for vacation, his family was astounded at how much he had learned.

Louis was just beginning his third year when Charles Barbier, a retired artillery captain in the French army, visited the Institute.

No matter how dark it might be, sentries at frontline outposts could read the orders merely by touching the raised impressions of the dots and dashes.

Pignier, in turn, informed Barbier, and the captain hastened to the school to meet this student who was tinkering with his invention.

Barbier defended his system with such feeling, and in such a commanding voice, Louis felt intimidated and did not know how to answer.

Louis’s mother worried about him when he came home for vacation. He looked so pale and gaunt.

He would sit on a grassy slope, basking in the sun and working patiently as he punched dots into paper.

Louis personally transcribed parts of a standard textbook, Grammar of Grammars, into his new alphabet.

When Louis celebrated his twentieth birthday in 1829, his raised-dot alphabet had been perfected to the point where it was substantially the same as the braille system used today.

Louis had just turned twenty when he became an apprentice teacher at a modest salary of fifteen francs a month.

Louis had just turned twenty when he became an apprentice teacher at a modest salary of fifteen francs a month.

The Paris Exposition of Industry was held that year in the Place de la Concorde, a huge open square in the heart of the French capital.

One distinguished visitor was Louis-Philippe, the king of France. He was accompanied by the Minister of the Interior, the government official who had refused to adopt Braille’s alphabet.

He would hold his audience spellbound as his fingers danced across the keys, playing everything from Beethoven sonatas to the popular songs of the day.

Louis was suffering from the early stages of tuberculosis, or “consumption” as it was then known, a disease that had afflicted other students and teachers at the Institute.

Louis was suffering from the early stages of tuberculosis, or “consumption” as it was then known, a disease that had afflicted other students and teachers at the Institute.

Louis was suffering from the early stages of tuberculosis, or “consumption” as it was then known, a disease that had afflicted other students and teachers at the Institute.

We know today that tuberculosis flourishes in damp, overcrowded surroundings.

Dufau felt that Braille’s system was too radical, too different from the conventional alphabet used by sighted people.

They feared that they would lose their privileged positions, and maybe their jobs, if the school adopted Braille’s alphabet—which could be taught just as well by blind teachers.

To make sure that his orders were followed, Dufau confiscated all textbooks and pamphlets that had been transcribed into the raised-dot alphabet.

As a teacher, Louis could not openly defy the director’s wishes.

Braille’s system might be banned from the classroom, but Guadet realized that it could never be banished from the students’ minds.

At the moment, however, he was busy with ambitious plans to move the school to new quarters.

He was ready to accept Braille’s alphabet and, by so doing, become the benefactor of every blind person in France.

In a voice that rang proudly through the auditorium, Guadet read his booklet to the crowd—to the school’s students and teachers, to the assembled friends, relatives, officials, and dignitaries.

In his short lifetime, Louis Braille had done more than anyone in history to bring blind people into the mainstream of life.

Today, the saddler’s son from Coupvray has received the highest honor his country can bestow.

He rests in the Pantheon in Paris, the burial place of France’s greatest heroes.

The braille system is in use throughout the world, in nearly every country and every language. It has been adapted to African dialects and to the complexities of the Chinese ideogram.