Louis Braille, the inventor of script for the blind, will be honored on January 4, 2009 at the moment of the 200th anniversary of his birth. He was born in the small village of Coupvray, about 30 km east of Paris, in 1809. Victim of an eye accident at the age of 3 in the workshop of his father, a harness maker, he found himself completely blind by the time he turned 5. At ten, his parents sent him to the Institution Royale des Aveugles, later renamed the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute of Young Blind). Here he spent his life as a student and then a professor. It was here, too, that he invented braille, which is today used around the world as the script for the blind. He also taught geography, math, and music. Killian’s fingers race across the braille pages of the 38 braille volumes of J.K Rowlings Harry Potter’s Order of the Phoenix. (Photo by John van Hasselt/Corbis via Getty Images)

(GERMANY OUT) Germany – Saarland – Lebach: public school for blind children, braille marked globe (Photo by INTRO/Christian Hahn/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

(Original Caption) 6/23/1952-Paris, France- Hellen Keller points to a chart of the braille alphabet during her speech at the Sorbonne, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of Louis Braille.

Portrait de l’inventeur français Louis Braille, gravure du XIXème siècle. (Photo by API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)