| Description : The coin designed by Luc Luycx is dedicated to Louis
Brailles (1809‐1852), a Frenchman who went blind at the age of five after an accident. At the age of eleven, he learned
of the "night writing" developed by Charles Barbier (1767‐1841), which was intended to give written orders to soldiers
at the front who could read them without lighting a lantern, as they would otherwise have exposed themselves to enemy fire.
In 1824, at the age of fifteen, he developed a code for the French alphabet to improve night writing. After a second
revision, in 1837 he published the first binary braille developed in modern times. Between the initials "L" and "B", which
are written in braille, the coin shows his image after a bust by an unknown artist. Above this is written in the form of an
arch "LOUIS BRAILLE". Below are "1809" as Braille's year of birth, the country abbreviation "BE" (Belgium) and the year of
issue "2009", flanked on the left by the helmeted head of the Archangel Michael the mint mark of the Royal Belgian mint
Monnaie Royale de Belgique / Koninklijke Munt van België / Königliche Belgische Münzprägeanstalt
in Brussels and on the right by a feather the logo of the mint master Serge Lesens. |
