Six Dots
The idea: a twelve-year-old was handed someone else's nearly-good idea and spent three years making it work.
Read it
Who is in this book
- Tara a child of the Green Listens longest, speaks last
Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.
The Honest Page
Which parts of this story are on record, which are legend — and what does nobody know?
Record
- Louis Braille was born on 4 January 1809 in Coupvray, France, and died in Paris on 6 January 1852. Source
- He was blinded in childhood after an accident in his father's harness workshop, and entered the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris in 1819. Source
- Charles Barbier's night writing used cells of up to twelve raised dots standing for sounds. Braille's system uses six dots standing for letters. Source
- Six dots, each raised or flat, make sixty-three patterns once the blank cell is left out.
- Braille published his method in 1829 and credited Barbier in it. The Paris institute adopted the system officially in 1854, two years after his death. Source
- His body was moved to the Panthéon in 1952; his hands remain buried in Coupvray. Source
Legend
- That Barbier made night writing at Napoleon's request, so soldiers could read orders in the dark. The story is told everywhere; no document has been found showing Napoleon asked for it. Source
- That the tool was an awl. Most accounts say so; it is a detail families retell, not a medical record. Source
Nobody knows
- The day the six-dot system was finished. The record gives 1824, when he was fifteen, not a date. Source
Tara’s sentence
The case stops where Tara speaks. Write the sentence you would have said. It stays on this device.
Kept.
Your sentence lives on this device. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Ring the hammer for someone
Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.