[Historic notices of Louis braille and the development of dot-writing (author's transl)]

Louis Braille is called by his first biographer to be the "Johannes Gutenberg for the blind". Being blind himself--caused by a sympathetic ophthalmia after a perforating hurt to his eye--he invented at the age of 16 years a simple and ingenious method enabling blind people to read and write. His system consisting of six elevated and palpable dots was rejected by the teachers of these days, claiming there could be a distance between blind and fullsighted men. Despite this opposition the Braille system succeeded because of its advantages for the blind: Nowadays this method is used all over the world.