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.