Thursday, July 23, 2009

The bicentenery of the birth of Louis Braille

The bicentenery of the birth of Louis Braille
Louis Braille Year "2009"
(By Akshay)
 
Louis Braille, who was born in a small town near Paris on 4 January 1809. His father was a cobbler. Louis lost his sight when he was 3 years old by injuring his eye with one of his father’s tools. This caused an infection, which spread to his other eye and he lost all of his sight.
Louis went to the village school for two years, where he learned by listening. At the age of 10 he got a scholarship to go to a school for blind boys in Paris, one of the first in the world. At the school, he was taught practical skills like chair caning and slipper making. Here, he became very good at maths and science and learned to play the organ. He was also taught to read but not to write. The letters he read were raised on a page. These letters were made by pressing letters made with copper wire onto a page. This type of writing was very hard to read because it was not easy to tell one letter from another. 
In 1821, a soldier named Charles Barbier de la Serre visited Louis' school to show the school children his invention, "night writing". Night writing was used by soldiers so that they could pass messages along trenches at night. It was too hard so the army didn’t use it. Louis wanted to invent an easier way of reading. He experimented with different codes and finally invented Braille. Braille uses a combination of six raised dots that represents each letter in the alphabet. He also developed a different code for maths and music.
In 1827 the first Braille book was produced. Not only could people who are blind or vision impaired use Braille to read but they could also now write using a simple stylus to make the dots. 
Louis eventually became a teacher at the school. Unfortunately, he did not live to see Braille used widely. Louis died on 6 January 1852, at the age of 43, from tuberculosis . Braille was not recognised as a way of reading and writing until 1918.
Today, Braille is used throughout the world and is taught to children from an early age. 
Many Countries are issueing stamps on Louis Braille world over, So it is not possible for me to give pictures of all the issues, that's why I am taking few of them and remaining are mentioned in list below.

1. INDIA 
Date of Issue : 04-01-2009 

2. FRANCE
Date of Issue: 05-01-2009

3. SLOVENIA 
Date of Issue: 30-01-2009

4. SWEDEN 

Date of Issue: 14-05-2009

5. IRELAND

Date of Issue:23-01-2009

6. AUSTRIA

Date of Issue:20-05-2009



7. NEATHERLAND


Date of Issue: 10-01-2009


8 ALGERIA 

Date of Issue:04-01-2009

9.BELGIUM

Date of Issue:23-02-2009



10.CYPRUS 
Date of Issue:13-03-2009


11. MOLDOVA 

Date of Issue:04-01-2009


12.ROMANIA

Date of Issue:01-11-2008





LIST OF COUNTRIES WHO HAVE ISSUED STAMP ON 
The LOUIS BRAILLE
S.NO COUNTRY DATE OF ISSUE
1 ALGERIA 04-01-2009
2 ANDORA 24-01-2009
3 ARUBA 05-01-2009
4 AUSTRIA 20-05-2009
5 BELARUS 04-01-2009
6 BELGIUM 23-02-2009
7 BRAZIL 04-01-2009
8 CYPRUS 12-03-2009
9 CZECH REPUBLIC 02-01-2009
10 FRANCE 04-01-2009
11 GREECE 30-03-2009
12 HUNGARY 15-10-2008
13 INDIA 04-01-2009
14 IRELAND 23-01-2009
15 KAZAKHSTAN 20-03-2009
16 KOREA 05-01-2009
17 MACAU 04-01-2009
18 MOLDOVA 04-01-2009
19 MONACO 29-04-2009
20 MOROCCO 16-01-2009
21 NEATHERLAND 10-01-2009
22 POLAND 04-01-2009
23 ROMANIA 01-11-2008
24 SAN-MARINO 16-06-2009
25 SAO-TOME 15-04-2009
26 SERBIA 04-01-2009
27 SLOVENIA 30-01-2009
28 SPAIN 15-07-2009
29 SWEDEN 14-03-2009
30 SYRIA 15-01-2009
31 UZBEKISTAN 02-02-2009
32 WALLIS AND FUTUNA 07-03-2009



LOUIS BRAILLE IS ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE ON WHOM STAMPS ARE ISSUED BY MAJORITY OF COUNTRIES.



 
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