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On January 4, 1809, in a small French village, a 5-year old boy named Louis was accidentally blinded in one eye while using tools in his father’s leather workshop. An infection spread to both eyes and Louis became blind and was sent to the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, where he would become inspired by a French army code of raised dots and dashes (that could read by touch in the dark). By age 16, Louis Braille would develop the alphabet-based fingertip reading system that would bear his name, using raised dots pressed into paper with an awl (the same kind of tool with which he had been blinded). In 1943, Helene Koehler (not to be confused, understandably, with Helen Keller) was a member of Trinity Lutheran Church in the Los Angeles area. After hearing about a blind pastor in Germany in need of a Braille Bible, Helene learned Braille and then spent months producing a German Braille Bible, one dot at a time. The thank-you letter from Germany contained a request: “How many more can you send?” And Lutheran Braille Workers (LBW) was born.