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 wonted to read more, but there were no more
books. 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
dots with their fingers and read with no light. Barbier thought night-
writing could also help blind people.