The Story of Louis Braille

The Story of Louis Braille

by Phil Shapiro

There was a time, not long ago, when most people thought that blind people could never learn to read. People thought that the only way to read was to look at words with your eyes.

A young French boy named Louis Braille thought otherwise. Blind from the age of three, young Louis desperately wanted to read. He realized the vast world of thought and ideas that was locked out to him because of his disability. And he was determined to find the key to this door for himself, and for all other blind persons.

This story begins in the early part of the nineteenth century. Louis Braille was born in 1809, in a small village near Paris. His father made harnesses and other leather goods to sell to the other villagers. Louis' father often used sharp tools to cut and punch holes in the leather.

One of the tools he used to makes holes was a sharp awl. An awl is a tool that looks like a short pointed stick, with a round, wooden handle. While playing with one of his father's awls, Louis' hand slipped and he accidentally poked one of his eyes. At first the injury didn't seem serious, but then the wound became infected. A few days later young Louis lost sight in both his eyes. The first few days after becoming blind were very hard.

But as the days went by Louis learned to adapt and learned to lead an otherwise normal life. He went to school with all his friends and did well at his studies. He was both intelligent and creative. He wasn't going to let his disability slow him down one bit.

As he grew older, he realized that the small school he attended did not have the money and resources he needed. He heard of a school in Paris that was especially for blind students. Louis didn't have to think twice about going. He packed his bags and went off to find himself a solid education.

When he arrived at the special school for the blind, he asked his teacher if the school had books for blind persons to read. Louis found that the school did have books for the blind to read.

These books had large letters that were raised up off the page. Since the letters were so big, the books themselves were large and bulky. More importantly, the books were expensive to buy. The school had exactly fourteen of them.

Louis set about reading all fourteen books in the school library. He could feel each letter, but it took him a long time to read a sentence. It took a few seconds to reach each word and by the time he reached the end of a sentence, he almost forgot what the beginning of the sentence was about. Louis knew there must be a better way.

There must be a way for a blind person to quickly feel the words on a page. There must be a way for a blind person to read as quickly and as easily as a sighted person.

That day he set himself the goal of thinking up a system for blind people to read. He would try to think of some alphabet code to make his 'finger reading' as quick and easy as sighted reading.

Now Louis was a tremendously creative person. He learned to play the cello and organ at a young age. He was so talented an organist that he played at churches all over Paris.

Music was really his first love. It also happened to be a steady source of income. Louis had great confidence in his own creative abilities.

He knew that he was as intelligent and creative as any other person his own age. And his musical talent showed how much he could accomplish when given a chance.

One day chance walked in the door. Somebody at the school heard about an alphabet code that was being used by the French army. This code was used to deliver messages at night from officers to soldiers. The messages could not be written on paper because the soldier would have to strike a match to read it.

The light from the match would give the enemy a target at which to shoot. The alphabet code was made up of small dots and dashes. These symbols were raised up off the paper so that soldiers could read them by running their fingers over them. Once the soldiers understood the code, everything worked fine.

Louis got hold of some of this code and tried it out. It was much better than reading the gigantic books with gigantic raised letters.

But the army code was still slow and cumbersome. The dashes took up a lot of space on a page. Each page could only hold one or two sentences. Louis knew that he could improve this alphabet in some way.

On his next vacation home, he would spend all his time working on finding a way to make this improvement. When he arrived home for school vacation, he was greeted warmly by his parents.

His mother and father always encouraged him on his music and other school projects. Louis sat down to think about how he could improve the system of dots and dashes. He liked the idea of the raised dots, but could do without the raised dashes.

As he sat there in his father's leather shop, he picked up one of his father's blunt awls. The idea came to him in a flash. The very tool which had caused him to go blind could be used to make a raised dot alphabet that would enable him to read.

The next few days he spent working on an alphabet made up entirely of six dots. The position of the different dots would represent the different letters of the alphabet.

Louis used the blunt awl to punch out a sentence. He read it quickly from left to right. Everything made sense. It worked...

(Louis Braille's invention continues to inspire new and innovative products that help build a world that is more inclusive for people with disabilities, such as ADA ramps, also known as "braille for the feet.")

Phil Shapiro

Copyright 1995

All Rights Reserved

[This story may be freely copied and distributed for noncommercial purposes. Commercial distribution of the story can be arranged by contacting the author at: pshapiro@his.com]

New World Vegetables

New World Vegetables

by Phil Shapiro

Sometime in the mid-15OO's, a European ship sailed back from North America carrying a precious cargo. Somewhere deep in the ship's hold were two types of precious seeds. One of the seeds looked small and yellow. The other seed was about the size of a fist, and its color was brown.

The yellow seed was from a plant that grew up to eight feet tall. This tall green plant would then grow many "ears" up and down its stalk. Within these ears would be a nutritious yellow vegetable. This yellow vegetable could be eaten in a variety of different ways. First, it could be steamed or boiled. Second, it could be ground up into a yellow flour, and you could use this flour to make a tasty bread.

Third, and most importantly, you could pop this yellow vegetable into tasty white puffs. With a little salt and butter, these white puffs were sure to be a popular snack back in Europe. The round, brown vegetable looked even more interesting. This brown vegetable grew underneath the ground. The top of the plant was poisonous to human beings, but the bottom part was tasty and filling. You could feed a family of four with just a few of these starchy brown vegetables.

Like the yellow-seeded vegetable, the brown vegetable could be cooked in many ways. You could boil it or fry it.

Many people seemed to like to eat this vegetable with meat.

When the captain of the ship landed back in Europe, he quickly set about growing more seeds of these new vegetables. All the seeds from the new crops were replanted to make more seeds. In a few seasons, there were enough of these vegetables to start selling at the European markets.

Now that you've been told all about them, can you guess what these two vegetables are?

Phil Shapiro

Copyright 1995

(This essay may be freely redistributed and reprinted for any nonprofit educational purpose. Use by a for-profit company requires permission from the author, who can be reached at: pshapiro@his.com)

What Does an Architect Do?

What Does an Architect Do?

by Phil Shapiro

Architects design all kinds of buildings. They design schools and skyscrapers. They design hospitals and hotels. They also design churches, train stations and plain old regular houses.

Any building that is used by people was probably designed by some architect.

Okay then, but what does the word "design" mean? A design is simply a plan. Before constructing a building, an architect needs to draw a plan of the building. Sometimes architects will make a cardboard or plastic model of the building.

The building is then built by a construction company which follows the directions of the plans for the building. The architect will closely supervise the construction company to make sure that the building is built according to the plans.

Okay then, but but what does an architect do when he or she draws up a plan?

Architects have to thnk of many things before they draw up the plans for a building. First they have to think about what the building will be used for. How many people are going to use the building at the same time? What types of activities will these people do in the building?

An office building will need lots of small rooms for offices. A school will need many medium-sized rooms for classrooms. And a train station will need one larger room for hundreds of people to pass thru at the same time.

All of these building must be built so that they can be used efficiently by everyone who walks through their doors. When architects discuss what the building will be used for, they talk abut the "function" of the building.

But the function of a building is just one of many things an architect has to think about when designing a building. Good architects also spend a lot of time making sure a building is safely designed, and making sure the building will last for many years.

A building that is not safely designed could catch on fire or fall down on itself.

Architects have to design building so that people can escape from the building in an emergency. Of course, some emergencies, such as earthquakes or tornadoes, destroy even the safest buildings.

A few years ago an architect had a real surprise when one of the buildings he designed collapsed under the weight of a foot of wet snow. The building was a sports arena with a large, curved roof. The heavy snow put so much pressure on the roof that the roof collapsed. Luckily nobody was in the sports arena at the time.

Besides thinking about the function and safety of a building, architecs also spend time creatively thinking about how they want the building to look. Just as a painter decides which paints to put where in a painting, an architect decides where to put the rooms, walls, and open spaces in a building.

Just as different painters have different styles of painting, different architects have different styles of designing. One architect might like to use a lot of circles and curves in his or her buildings. Another architect might like to design buildings that look sleek and flat.

So architects have to be good artists and good scientists when they design a building. The building must be pleasant to look at, pleasant to work in and strong enough to be safe from most natural disasters.

Trying to do all these things at the same time is part of the challenge and excitement of being an architect.

Phil Shapiro

Copyright 1988

(This reading passage may be freely redistributed and reprinted for any nonprofit educational purpose. Use by a for-profit company requires permission from the author, who can be reached at: pshapiro@his.com)

They Forgot to Plant an Acorn on the Moon

They Forgot to Plant an Acorn on the Moon

by Phil Shapiro

The surface of the moon looks a lot like a desert. It's dry, rocky, and sandy. There are no plants on the moon. Not even a small cactus.

In the year 1969 human beings from planet Earth first stepped on the moon. They walked around a bit and collected some moon rocks to take back with them. By mistake, they forgot to plant the acorn.

They had brought an acorn with them, along with a watering can and some potting soil. They were supposed to plant the acorn a few hundred yards away from the spaceship, but they forgot. They plain forgot.

You can't really blame them though. They had so much else to do. Every minute of every day they had something important to do. People from NASA were telling them what to do over the radio.

But what if they had remembered to plant the acorn? What if they had dug down a couple of inches in the loose soil, dropped some sweet-smelling potting soil into the hole, and gently placed the acorn in its new home? What if they covered the acorn with some more sweet-smelling potting soil, and gently watered it with their watering can?

An acorn doesn't need a lot of things to grow. It needs water, it needs soil, it needs sunlight, and it needs carbon dioxide gas. Now, there's plenty of soil and plenty of sunlight on the moon. But water and carbon dioxide are in short supply. That's why the astronauts brought a watering can with them.

They also brought a small plastic greenhouse with them. The plan was to place the greenhouse right over the planted acorn. Then the greenhouse was supposed to be filled with carbon dioxide gas.

After the acorn sprouted, it would pop up through the soil right in the middle of the greenhouse. There would be lots of water, soil, sunlight, and carbon dioxide for the small plant to grow tall and strong.

Plants both produce and consume carbon dioxide. A plant placed in a closed bottle, with good soil, sunlight and water, can survive for years without any care from human beings. (If you don't believe me, you can try this yourself at home.)

As the little oak tree grew, it would produce more and more carbon dioxide from its leaves. Its branches would reach out and bump into the walls of the greenhouse. One day, the top of the oak tree would poke its way through the top of the greenhouse.

When that happened, some of the carbon dioxide and oxygen would escape through this hole. But the strong plant would continue to grow and continue to produce more of these two gases.

So if you think of the moon's atmosphere as a small glass bottle in space, it might be possible for an oak tree to grow in its soil If only the astronauts had not forgotten to plant the acorn.

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