Editing Louis Braille (section)

===Haüy system===
[[File:Braille house07.JPG|thumb|right|Bust and awl exhibit at the Braille birthplace museum in Coupvray|alt=A bust of Braille next to items in a display case]]

The children were taught to read using a system devised by the school's founder, [[Valentin Haüy]]. Not blind himself, Haüy was a philanthropist who devoted his life to helping the blind. He designed and manufactured a small library of books for the children by [[Paper embossing|embossing]] heavy paper with the raised imprints of [[Latin alphabet|Latin letters]]. Readers would trace their fingers over the text, comprehending slowly but in a traditional fashion which Haüy could appreciate.<ref name=Kugelmass3738>Kugelmass (1951), pp. 37–38.</ref>

Braille was helped by Haüy's books, but he also despaired over their lack of depth: the amount of information retained in such books was necessarily minor. Because the raised letters were made in a complex artisanal process using wet paper pressed against copper wire, the children could not hope to "write" by themselves. So that the young Louis could send letters back home, Simon-René provided him with an alphabet made from bits of thick leather. It was a slow and cumbersome process, but the boy could at least trace the letters' outlines and write his first sentences.<ref>Kugelmass (1951), p. 48.</ref>

The handcrafted Haüy books all came in uncomfortable sizes and weights for children. They were laboriously constructed, very fragile, and expensive to obtain: when Haüy's school first opened, it had a total of three books.<ref name=Kugelmass3738/> Nonetheless, Haüy promoted their use with zeal. To him, the books presented a system which would be readily approved by educators and indeed they seemed – at the time – to offer the best achievable results. Braille and his schoolmates, however, could detect all too well the books' crushing limitations.<ref name=Kugelmass3738/> Nonetheless, Haüy's efforts still provided a breakthrough achievement – the recognition of the [[sense of touch]] as a workable strategy for sightless reading. The Haüy system's main drawback, in the opinion of at least one author, was that it was "talking to the fingers with the language of the eye".<ref name=Farrell96>Farrell, p. 96.</ref>