Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/662

644 an inspiration of genius, he conceived what might be asked of the touch, which is so marvelously developed in the blind. Having made some characters in relief representing the letters of the alphabet, he undertook, in 1784, the education of a blind mendicant named Lesueur. The pupil's rapid progress soon made the inventor's name celebrated. This attempt was the origin of the Institution for the Blind in Paris.

Louis Braille, son of an artisan, like Haüy, completed the work of his predecessor. He was born at Compvray in 1809, and lost his sight, when three years old, in consequence of an injury he received from a knife. He entered the Paris Institution for the Blind in 1819, and became distinguished as a pupil, and afterward as a professor. He published, in 1829, his admirable "Anaglyptographie," or method of reading and writing by points in relief. He was inspired to this work by observing the cryptographic system devised in 1819 by Barbier, the artillery-officer, and constructed a method of admirable simplicity. It is equally well adapted to manuscript work and to printing: it can be applied to orthographic writing, to stenography, to mathematics, and to music. It has been used in printing books since 1849, and is still very generally in favor.

The basis of the alphabet is a group of six points arranged in vertical lines of three each, like the six of dominoes, which are

A first series of ten figures, obtained by a methodical combination of the four upper points, 1, 3, 4, and 5, constitute the fundamental signs.

Adding point 3 to these characters, we get the signs of the second series, embracing letters from k to t. The addition of the points 3 and 6 furnishes a third series; and a fourth series may be obtained by adding the point 6 to each of the first ten characters. The points 4 and 6 placed before a letter make it capital; and there are signs for the punctuation-marks.

The numerical sign, composed of the points 3, 4, 5, and 6, changes into figures or numbers the signs or groups of signs of the first series which it precedes. Thus, the letter a, preceded by this sign, becomes the figure 1 the letter b figure 2, etc. The number 1234, for instance, would be written by prefixing the numerical sign to the group of letters a b c d