louis braille was born near paris, France,in 1809.when he was a little boy,louis loved to play with his father's tools. one day,when he was four,he was playing with his father's tools when a sharp tool went into his left eye. an infection started in his left eye and went to the other eye. he was unlucky. a few weeks later, louis was blind.
when louis was ten, his parents took him to a school for blind children in paris. louis lived at the school.He was a good student and looked forward to the day when he could read. The school had some books that blind people could read. These books had letters that stood out. He had to feel each letter with his fingers. There was one sentence on each page. Just one part of a book weighed 20 pounds. A whole book weighed 400 pounds! By age eleven, Louis had read all fourteen books in the school.He wanted to read more, but there were no more book.So every evening, he tried to find a way for blind people to be able to read books. One day, Captain Charles Barbier, A French soldier,came to speak at the school. Barbier had invented night-writing. This system used dots for the letters of the alphabet. Soldiers could feel the dot with their fingers and read with no light. Barbier thought night writing could also help blind people.