Louis Braille 2009 Commemorative Silver Dollar

Louis Braille was born in 1809 in the village of Coupvray, France. At the age of three he accidently poked himself in the eye with an awl from his fathers leather shop. He became blind in both eyes after the wound became infected and the infection spread to both eyes. In 1819 his parents moved to Paris, because Louis received a schoolarship to attend the "Royal Institute for Blind Children."

In 1921 Charles Barbier de la Serre, a captain in Napoléon Bonaparte’s army, visited the Institute to teach the students about "Night Writing." Barbier had invented ‘‘Night Writing’’, a code for communicating on the battlefield amidst the thick smoke of combat or at night without using light, as light would expose their location to enemy gun fire. "Night Writing" used raised dots and dashes that could be felt with the fingers to represent different sounds. Each sound or syllable in the French Language was represented by up to 12 dots or dashes. Later "Night Writing" was called Sonography because it represented words by sounds, rather than spelling.

Louis eagerly learned Sonography, but soon realized that this method of writing was too cumbersome. So at the age of 12 he started to develop his own version of code for communicating to the blind. Louis cut the code down to only 6 dots and opted for the code to represent letters and spelling, rather than sounds. At the age of 15 he wrote is first book in Braille. He also was an accomplished musician and later taught at the "Royal Institute for Blind Children." Louis Braille died of tuberculosis on January 6, 1852, in Paris, France.

The Braille system is the globally accepted code for those with visual impairments. There is a different code for each different language. There are also Braille codes for Music, Mathematics, and Chemistry. Helen Keller said of Louis Braille, "In our way, we, the blind, are as indebted to Louis Braille as mankind is to Gutenberg."

Several world mints have produced Louis Braille commemorative coins including the United States, France, India, Italy, Belguim, Isle of Man, and Palau. Other countries have also included Braille on their coinage: Peru, Mexico, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Thailand, Poland, Bhutan, Czech Republic, and others.

References and Additional information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Braille
https://www.biography.com/people/louis-braille-9224001
http://www.worldofcoins.eu/forum/index.php?topic=22963.0
http://braillebug.afb.org/braille_deciphering.asp