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Louis Braille got his inspiration to use embossed dots to represent letters after he watched Charles Barbier, a retired artillery officer in Napoleon’s army, demonstrate a note-taking system he invented of embossed dots to represent sounds (most of the soldiers were illiterate) that would allow notes to be passed among the ranks without striking a light, which might alert the enemy to their position.
The army was not impressed, so Barbier brought his system to the school for the blind. Louis immediately recognized its merits and spent the next three years improving upon Barbier’s idea.
In 1824, when Braille was only 15 years old, he developed a six-dot “cell” system. He used Barbier’s system as a starting point and cut its 12-dot configuration in half. The system was first published in 1829; a more complete elaboration appeared in 1837.