60 Louis Braille, Alphabet Maker

Blind people can read. They do so by running their fingers along a line of raised points or dots on paper. Of course, they first have to learn the code. Here are some examples of it. One dot stands for the letter “A.” Two dots side by side mean “C.” Four dots arranged to look like a box (:) stand for the letter “G.” By placing the dots in special patterns, all the letters of the alphabet can be formed.

This code was made up by Frenchman Louis Braille. Though he could see at birth, he became sightless when he was only three. Braille was cutting leather in his father’s shop. His knife slipped and cut his eye. Infection spread to both eyes, and he became blind.

At 10, he was placed in a home for the blind. But young Louis had great talent. He became a skilled musician and soon got a job as a church organist in Paris.

Because he had talent and was quick, he became a teacher at a school for the blind. While there, he heard that an army captain had sent messages to his gun crews so they could read them at night without light. His messages were in the simple form of raised dots and dashes. This was the clue Louis needed. At the age of 15, he worked out his own six-dot code. Each group of dots is called a cell. The cells are three dots high and two dots wide. For the rest of his life, Braille taught his young flock to read both written and musical works using the code.

For the last 17 years of his life, Braille was ill with tuberculosis. He died at the age of 43. France honored him by placing his remains in the famous Pantheon in Paris.

60 路易·布莱叶，字母创造者

盲人可以阅读，他们通过用手指在纸上的一排凸起点或点上滑动来阅读。当然，他们首先得学习这种代码。这里有一些例子，一个点代表字母“A”，两个点并排代表“C”，四个点排列成盒子形状（:）代表字母“G”。通过将点排列成特殊的图案，字母表中的所有字母都可以形成。

这种代码是由法国人路易·布莱叶发明的。虽然他出生时能看见，但在三岁时就失明了。布莱叶在他父亲的店里切割皮革时，刀滑了，划伤了他的眼睛，感染扩散到两只眼睛，他因此失明。

10岁时，他被送进盲人之家。但年轻的路易很有天赋，他成了一名熟练的音乐家，很快在巴黎的一座教堂找到了管风琴师的工作。

因为他有天赋且思维敏捷，他成了一所盲人学校的老师。在那里，他听说一位陆军上尉曾向他的炮兵部队发送信息，以便他们能在夜间无光的情况下阅读。他的信息是用简单的凸起点和破折号形式呈现的。这就是路易需要的线索。15岁时，他设计出了自己的六点代码，每组点被称为一个“单元”，这些单元高三个点，宽两个点。在他的余生中，布莱叶用这种代码教他的年轻学生阅读文字和音乐作品。

在他生命的最后17年里，布莱叶患有肺结核，43岁时去世。法国将他的遗体安放在巴黎著名的万神殿以表敬意。