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The clue for that device came from a strange source: an army captain had invented a system of dot-and-dash symbols which could be punched out on thick paper and read by touch at night. When Braille heard about it, he got the idea of inventing an alphabet code of his own. The result was the Braille system, based on various arrangements of from one to six dots.
For five years, Louis worked on his code, translating every letter into the simplest possible cluster of dots. He also invented a special stylus and slate with which the blind could write, started working on a system of musical and mathematical notation. Meanwhile, tapping his way about "in the dark hours and crooked passages," he began teaching his method to his own pupils.
Mandarin & Swahili. Beyond that tiny circle, no one paid much attention to his system. The academicians ignored him, and for a while so did his own school. It was not until the Blind and Deaf-Mute Congress of 1878 that Braille's dots won final international recognition. After that, the system began to spread—to the Mandarin of China, the Araucanian of Chile, the Swahili of East Africa, to 49 different languages in all.
Louis Braille himself never lived to see the day, but on his deathbed, he seemed to know it was coming. "Oh, unsearchable mystery of the human heart," he said to a friend. "I am convinced that my mission on earth is accomplished." Last week, the mission he performed was put into words by Helen Keller. "We, the blind," said she at the Sorbonne ceremony, "are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg . . . The raised letters under our fingers are precious pods from which has sprouted our intellectual wealth. Without a dot system, what a chaotic, inadequate affair our education would be!"