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 ...