Louis Braille was born in France in 1809. His father had a small business. He made shoes and other things from leather. Louis liked to help his father in the store even when he was very small. One day when Louis was 3 years old, he was cutting some leather. Suddenly the knife slipped and hit him in the eye. He soon became completely blind.
When he was ten years old, he entered the National Institute for the blind in Paris. One day his class went to visit a special exhibit by a captain in the army. One thing in the exhibit was very interesting for Louis. It showed messages in code. Armies send messages in secret codes so no one else can read them. The captain wrote this code in raised letters on very thick paper.
Louis thought a lot about this code. Then he decided to write in the same way so the blind could "read" with their fingers. It is very difficult to feel the differences between raised letters. Instead of letters. Louis used a "cell" of six dots. He arranged the dots with two dots across and three down. So blind people can read and write even write music by Braille.