In 1812, when he was three years old, Louis Braille became blind. A bright boy and an accomplished musician, he later attended the world's first school for blind children, located in Paris. Then, at only fifteen, he developed a system of reading and writing through raised dots (known today as Braille) that is still used in almost every country in the world. He died on January 6th, 1852.

Louis Braille certainly wasn't your average teenager. Blind from the age of four, he was only fifteen when in 1824 he invented a reading system that converted printed words into columns of raised dots. Through touch, Braille opened the world of books to the sightless, and almost two hundred years later, no one has ever improved upon his simple, brilliant idea.