Louis Braille was born in 1809 in a small town near Paris.
Playing in his father's leather workshop when he was 4, Louis tried to use a sharp, pointed tool called an awl, used for making holes in leather. He bent over, intending to try making shoes like his father did, but the awl slipped and went into his eye, blinding it.
With sight in just one eye, he attended school for two years, but his other eye became infected by the first, and he became totally blind. He had to leave school because he wouldn't be able to learn much more without eyesight. In those days there was little assistance for blind people, and most blind adults were forced to become beggars in the street as their only means of making any sort of living.
When he was 10, a school for blind boys opened in Paris, one of the first such schools in the world. Louis was lucky enough to be accepted there as a pupil. As in all schools at that time, discipline was harsh, and pupils who misbehaved were beaten, locked up and fed bread and water. Most people left school at the age of 12 in order to work in factories or down mines.