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 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 feet the dots with their fingers and read with no light. Barbier thought night-writing could also help blind people.