A little introduction:
Louis Braille, born on January 4, 1809 in the small village Coupvray, east of Paris, was the son of a leatherer and horse tack maker.
As a child he played in his father's workshop. Trying to copy the work of his father, he got severely injured in his eye. Although he was taken care of, in a specialised hospital in Paris, the infection damaged also the other eye, and by the age of 5, the boy was completely blind.
Brave Louis stayed in Coupvray until he was 10 and went then to a school on Paris, specialised in higher education for blind youth. This private school however was based on a reading system using embossed latin characters. (the Haüy - system). This was the first and only attempt to allow blind people to 'read' books.
However the process of writing was so complicated that Louis hardly could write back to his family.
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| Louis Braille |
Barbier willingly shared his invention called "night writing" which was a code of dots and dashes impressed into thick paper. These impressions could be interpreted entirely by the fingers, letting soldiers share information on the battlefield without having light or needing to speak. The captain's code turned out to be too complex to use in its original military form, but it inspired Braille to develop a system of his own.
In 1854, two years after Brailles death, his reading system was adopted at the National Institute for Blind Youth, in Paris, and later on also all over France.
In 1855, the first Braille-typewrite was introduced at the World's Fair.
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| (French) braille alphabeth |
Now to the stamps :
In 2009, to celebrate the 200th birth date of Louis Braille, Belgium issued a large stamp with Louis Braille, and his alphabeth.
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| Belgium 2009 - Louis Braille |
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| back side of the stamp - embossed writing |
The stamp was issued for use within Belgium, and was printed in sheets of 10 stamps.
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| sheet of 10 (reduced size) |
more to follow ...
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