Agartala, January 4 (TIWN): All Tripura Blind Committee (ATBC) today celebrated the 206th birthday of the architect of ‘Braille Method’ Louis Braille at ATBC’s office premise in Office Lane. A vast number of dignitaries and members of ATBC remembered him by paying floral tribute to his memory.

 Among the noticeable, Social Welfare and Social Education Minister Bijita Nath and Mayor of Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC)- Dr. Prafullajit Sinha were present during the observance of Louis Braille’s birthday and paid homage to his memory. They also delivered their essential speeches too. Besides a blood donation camp was also organized by ATBC in which over 30 persons have donated blood.

 According to a statement from ATBC, Louis Braille was born in 1809, in a small village near Paris. His father made harnesses and other leather goods to sell to the other villagers. His father often used sharp tools to cut and punch holes in the leather. He was so talented an organist that he played at churches all over Paris. Music was really his first love. It also happened to be a steady source of income. Louis had great confidence in his own creative abilities.

It was also mentioned in the statement that Louis had lost his sight at a young age. Aged 10, he was sent to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth. It was at the Institute in 1821 that Louis was first introduced to the idea of using a coded system of raised dots. Over the next few years he worked hard to develop his own version of the code, using just six dots to represent the standard alphabet.

The alphabet code was made up of small dots and dashes. These symbols were raised up off the paper so that soldiers could read them by running their fingers over them. Once the soldiers understood the code, everything worked fine.

 The raised dot system now known as 'Braille method' was pioneered by a young Frenchman called Louis Braille for the interest of the blind people.