Louis Braille was born in Coupvray near Paris. When he was three years old, he was blinded in a horrific accident. Aged 10 he went to a school for blind children in Paris, and it was there, aged 25, that he perfected his system of raised dots on paper or other materials which enabled blind people to read efficiently with their fingertips. He stayed at the school as a teacher and put his wages into printing books using his alphabet. He died there of tuberculosis at the age of 42.
