INVENTOR

Louis Braille

1809 - 1852

Photo of Louis Braille

Icon of person Louis Braille

Louis Braille ( brayl; French: [lwi bʁɑj]; 4 January 1809 – 6 January 1852) was a French educator and the inventor of a reading and writing system named after him, braille, intended for use by visually impaired people. His system is used worldwide and remains virtually unchanged to this day. Braille was blinded at the age of three in one eye as a result of an accident with a stitching awl in his father's harness making shop. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Louis Braille has received more than 2,080,813 page views. His biography is available in 85 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 79 in 2019). Louis Braille is the 12th most popular inventor (down from 11th in 2019), the 81st most popular biography from France (down from 66th in 2019) and the most popular French Inventor.

Louis Braille is most famous for inventing a system of writing for the blind and visually impaired. This system, called braille, is composed of raised dots that can be read by touch.

Memorability Metrics

  • 2.1M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 77.89

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 85

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 14.45

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.44

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among INVENTORS

Among inventors, Louis Braille ranks 12 out of 426. Before him are Elon Musk, Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, Henry Ford, Guglielmo Marconi, and Charles Babbage. After him are Samuel Morse, Cai Lun, Nikolaus Otto, Louis Daguerre, George Stephenson, and Rudolf Diesel.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1809, Louis Braille ranks 6. Before him are Charles Darwin, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, Felix Mendelssohn, and Nikolai Gogol. After him are Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Albert Pike, Bruno Bauer, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Joseph Liouville. Among people deceased in 1852, Louis Braille ranks 2. Before him is Nikolai Gogol. After him are Ada Lovelace, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Friedrich Fröbel, Henry Clay, Auguste de Marmont, Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, Johan Gadolin, Karl Bryullov, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, and Vasily Zhukovsky.

Others Born in 1809

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Others Deceased in 1852

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In France

Among people born in France, Louis Braille ranks 81 out of 6,770. Before him are Jacques-Louis David (1748), William the Conqueror (1028), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841), Louis the Pious (778), Henry III of France (1551), and Madame du Barry (1743). After him are Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744), Louis XVII of France (1785), Pierre de Coubertin (1863), Jacques Chirac (1932), Louis IX of France (1214), and Pope Urban II (1042).

Others born in France

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Among INVENTORS In France

Among inventors born in France, Louis Braille ranks 1. After him are Louis Daguerre (1787), Rudolf Diesel (1858), Nicéphore Niépce (1765), Denis Papin (1647), Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752), Nicolas Appert (1749), Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot (1725), Louis Renault (1877), Louis Blériot (1872), Claude Chappe (1763), and Jacques de Vaucanson (1709).

French born Inventors

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