I’m celebrating the Braille birthday by making me a present for myself: the Lego Braille Alphabet bricks.
This set of braille bricks that can be used so creatively beamed me back to my childhood.
I created this record in honor of Louis Braille.
In the upper half you can see Louis Braille’s alphabet. It is deliberately arranged in three rows. If you look at them in table form, you will see that the patterns from row 1 continue into rows 2 and 3.
In line 3 the w is out of line. It was subsequently incorporated by Louis Braille at the suggestion of an Englishman. The Frenchman didn’t need it for his alphabet.
With Braille’s 6-dot pattern, all alphanumeric characters can be displayed. This modern writing was created in the 19th century, which also gave rise to the theoretical foundations of computer science. Computer scientists characterize our braille as 6-bit binary code. That’s one brilliant thing.
The other thing: One character fits under one fingertip. If their tactile bodies are conditioned for reading, we get this “one fingertip freedom” after which Thomas Zwerina titled his novel about the life of Louis Braille.
The characters from the first row follow again in the next row. Here in their function as numbers. A “#” turns the letters a-j into the numbers 1-0.
In the lower half is the name Louis Braille. There is a shift sign in front of the first letters of the first and last name. The 6-point font does not require different characters for upper and lower case letters. The sign does the distinction.
The last line is a date game for the birthday beyond today: January 4, 1809 – 2025 +
On January 6, 1851, Louis Braille died from the unhealthy living conditions in Paris at the time. His writing developed its global significance after his death.