The bicentennial of the birth of Louis Braille

The bicentennial of the birth of Louis Braille
Louis Braille Year “2009″
(By Akshay)

Louis Braille, who was born in a small town near Paris on 4 January 1809. His father was a cobbler. Louis lost his sight when he was 3 years old by injuring his eye with one of his father’s tools. This caused an infection, which spread to his other eye and he lost all of his sight.

Louis went to the village school for two years, where he learned by listening. At the age of 10 he got a scholarship to go to a school for blind boys in Paris, one of the first in the world. At the school, he was taught practical skills like chair caning and slipper making. Here, he became very good at maths and science and learned to play the organ. He was also taught to read but not to write. The letters he read were raised on a page. These letters were made by pressing letters made with copper wire onto a page. This type of writing was very hard to read because it was not easy to tell one letter from another.

In 1821, a soldier named Charles Barbier de la Serre visited Louis’ school to show the school children his invention, “night writing”. Night writing was used by soldiers so that they could pass messages along trenches at night. It was too hard so the army didn’t use it. Louis wanted to invent an easier way of reading. He experimented with different codes and finally invented Braille. Braille uses a combination of six raised dots that represents each letter in the alphabet. He also developed a different code for maths and music.

In 1827 the first Braille book was produced. Not only could people who are blind or vision impaired use Braille to read but they could also now write using a simple stylus to make the dots.

Louis eventually became a teacher at the school. Unfortunately, he did not live to see Braille used widely. Louis died on 6 January 1852, at the age of 43, from tuberculosis . Braille was not recognized as a way of reading and writing until 1918.

Today, Braille is used throughout the world and is taught to children from an early age.

Many Countries are issuing stamps on Louis Braille world over, So it is not possible for me to give pictures of all the issues, that’s why I am taking few of them and remaining are mentioned in list below.

1. INDIA

Date of Issue : 04-01-2009

2. FRANCE

Date of Issue: 05-01-2009

3. SLOVENIA

Date of Issue: 30-01-2009

4. SWEDEN

Date of Issue: 14-05-2009

5. IRELAND

Date of Issue:23-01-2009

6. AUSTRIA

Date of Issue:20-05-2009

7. NEATHERLAND

Date of Issue: 10-01-2009

8 ALGERIA

Date of Issue:04-01-2009

9.BELGIUM

Date of Issue:23-02-2009

10.CYPRUS

Date of Issue:13-03-2009

11. MOLDOVA

Date of Issue:04-01-2009

12.ROMANIA

Date of Issue:01-11-2008

LIST OF COUNTRIES WHO HAVE ISSUED STAMP ON
The LOUIS BRAILLE

S.NO	COUNTRY	DATE OF ISSUE
1	ALGERIA	04-01-2009
2	ANDORA	24-01-2009
3	ARUBA	05-01-2009
4	AUSTRIA	20-05-2009
5	BELARUS	04-01-2009
6	BELGIUM	23-02-2009
7	BRAZIL	04-01-2009
8	CYPRUS	12-03-2009
9	CZECH REPUBLIC	02-01-2009
10	FRANCE	04-01-2009
11	GREECE	30-03-2009
12	HUNGARY	15-10-2008
13	INDIA	04-01-2009
14	IRELAND	23-01-2009
15	KAZAKHSTAN	20-03-2009
16	KOREA	05-01-2009
17	MACAU	04-01-2009
18	MOLDOVA	04-01-2009
19	MONACO	29-04-2009
20	MOROCCO	16-01-2009
21	NEATHERLAND	10-01-2009
22	POLAND	04-01-2009
23	ROMANIA	01-11-2008
24	SAN-MARINO	16-06-2009
25	SAO-TOME	15-04-2009
26	SERBIA	04-01-2009
27	SLOVENIA	30-01-2009
28	SPAIN	15-07-2009
29	SWEDEN	14-03-2009
30	SYRIA	15-01-2009
31	UZBEKISTAN	02-02-2009
32	WALLIS AND FUTUNA	07-03-2009

LOUIS BRAILLE IS ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE ON WHOM STAMPS ARE ISSUED BY MAJORITY OF COUNTRIES.

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