4 January: Braille Day

4^th January is Braille Day

Braille, a system of writing for the visually impaired, was invented by Frenchman Louis Braille, who celebrated his birthday on 4^th January. Here are 10 things you may not know about Braille and his writing system.

1. Braille was only 15 years old when he developed the Braille system.
2. Braille went blind at the age of 3 as a result of an eye infection following an accident in his father's workshop.
3. The accident was caused by an awl, and later Braille was to use an awl to make the indentations of the Braille dots on paper.
4. The inspiration for the system was a system of “night writing”, which had been developed for the military by Charles Barbier
5. The first Braille system included dashes as well as dots, but the dashes were abandoned as they were harder to read.
6. Louis Braille also invented a braille system for reading musical notation.
7. The system was not taught at the Institute where Braille was a pupil and a teacher, until after his death.
8. Asteroid 9969, discovered in 1992, was named Braille after Louis Braille.
9. The original system had no letter w because that letter was not part of the basic French alphabet.
10. Canadian banknotes use a form of braille to allow visually impaired people to read the denomination of the notes.