Table of Contents for this Episode
[00:00:00]
Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 612, six cent douze.
Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent, and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today on the podcast: Louis Braille
Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about Louis Braille, the French blind teenager who invented a reading system that changed the world.
We cover his accident, his fight with educators who resisted his innovations, and his legacy in the Pantheon.
As a guide dog puppy raiser in Toulouse, I’ve met many blind people, and their inclusion in all aspects [00:01:00] of life matters deeply to me. Stay tuned because I’ll also tell you what to actually do and not do when you meet a blind person with a guide dog.
Podcast supporters
Annie: Before we start, this show runs on listener support. If you want to work with me directly, I do itinerary consults, VoiceMap tours of Paris, and day trips around the southwest of France.
Everything is at joinusinfrance.com/boutique. And if you shop on Amazon anyway, starting at joinusinfrance.com/amazon costs you nothing but helps the show.
There will not be a magazine part to the podcast today because this recording was really long, but I am back from vacation, back to normal life, and the weather is finally cooling off in France.
And I want to thank my patrons again for giving back and supporting this show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that.
You can see them at [00:02:00] patreon.com/joinus. And a special shout-out this week to my new Join Us in France champions, Narel Richardson, Madame Hall. Bonjour Isabelle! Carol Mott, and Barb. And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.
Meet Louis Braille
Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse: Bonjour, Annie.
Annie: We have a subject we have… I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time.
Elyse: Yes.
Annie: So I’m glad we’re doing a short biography of Louis Braille, or Braille.
Elyse: Braille in English. That’s right.
Annie: Yes.
Elyse: Yes. I don’t even know how many people out there realize that the Braille system [00:03:00] is named after a person.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: I mean that was his name.
Annie: That’s correct, Louis Braille.
Elyse: Louis Braille.
Why This Story Matters
Elyse: And so my first question to you today, Annie, is I know this is a subject that you’re extremely passionate about, that you really wanted to do, and maybe you could tell us a little bit why.
Annie: Sure. It’s funny because I have been seeing blind people and guide dogs for the blind since I was quite young, because I grew up near a guide dog school for the blind.
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: And seeing that I love dogs…
Elyse: Right, right.
Annie: … I was always attracted to these magical dogs, you know, and they’re not magic. I’m going to tell you a little bit about that later.
But yes, that’s where my interest comes from.
And then when I married my husband, his grandmother, it turned out, [00:04:00] has had a big role to play in the education of blind people and the education of teachers for the blind.
Elyse: Hmm.
Annie: And we’ll get to that as well later.
Elyse: Really?
Annie: Yes. So that’s… that’s why.
Coupvray And The Era
Annie: And also, this last November, I took a long trip around France, and one of the stops I made was in Coupvray or Coupvray, where Louis Braille was born.
Elyse: Well, I think you went there because you were already interested in it.
Annie: Oh, definitely.
Elyse: Definitely. Right.
Annie: This is not a village you go to by mistake. There’s nothing there besides the…
Elyse: It’s east of Paris.
Annie: Correct. Yes, it’s east of Paris. So nowadays it’s an hour-and-a-half drive east of Paris without traffic. Can be longer. This is Paris. But back then when Louis Braille was alive, it was a four-hour coach trip into Paris. So, yeah.
Elyse: So let me just say for [00:05:00] those out there, because me, I knew nothing about him. I mean, I’ve known that the system exists, and I’ve always seen places where they have signs, you know, in Braille, and it’s always been interesting to me, but it’s never been a subject that I delved into, okay? So for me, even doing the little bit of research about his life, when he lived, how long he lived, and actually the things that happened to him was actually really interesting, you know? So…
Annie: Oh, he’s a fascinating character, and definitely one of the grand people that we have in France, and he is in the Panthéon because of it.
Elyse: So, just for me to begin to put it into context, so he was born in 1809, which means that he was born… Okay, well, you’re going to catch me on this one. This is the Restoration? Is this the… this is right after Napoleon, or is it still Napoleon?
Annie: It’s still Napoleon Bonaparte, I think, but barely.
Elyse: Barely.
Annie: Barely. Yeah.
Elyse: Okay. So we’re talking about [00:06:00] 220-something, basically 220 years ago.
Annie: Right.
Elyse: You want to talk a little bit about what happened to him?
Childhood Accident And Blindness
Annie: Well, okay, he was born into a family, where his father and his grandfather were both saddle and harness makers. And I saw the house. It’s a small stone house, which means there was some means in the family. They were not super poor, but I mean, it’s like Little House on the Prairie sort of house, okay? It’s very small.
Elyse: My guess is it was probably a little bit more affluent at the time maybe. I mean, it’s a sort of crafts house, right?
Annie: Perhaps. But by comparison to other people. And also, he had his workshop where he lived, so it was a house/workshop, sort of situation.
Louis Braille was the fourth child. He had a brother and two sisters, and as a little boy, he was very interested by whatever his father did. And one day when his father was talking to a [00:07:00] customer outside of the house, the little boy snuck into the workshop and tried to imitate what he had seen his father do many times, which is poke a piece of leather with an awl.
Elyse: An awl, yeah.
Annie: An awl is like a really pointy, sharp thing-
Elyse: I know what it is, yeah.
Annie: … that you use to make holes into leather, and because it wasn’t working, he got his face really close to the leather, and it just slipped, and he completely poked out his left eye.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: So he pierced the eye.
Elyse: And this is at the age of three.
Annie: Yes. Yes, he was three. So obviously this was terribly painful, and it was a terrible, dramatic moment, but he survived. They called a doctor who couldn’t do bloody much, and very quickly, as is usually the case the eye got infected. They had no antibiotics at the time, and quickly after that, it spread to the other eye, which is typically what happens in… Today, when in Third World countries where there are [00:08:00] eye injuries and no antibiotics available, that’s also what happens. It usually spreads to the other eye anyway.
Elyse: Which I hadn’t known.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: Which I really hadn’t known.
Annie: Unfortunately, without some very rapid and very serious medical help, you will lose both eyes.
Anyway, the poor kid, by the time he was four, he had lost most of his sight, and by the time he was five, he was completely blind. Yes. So, a terrible start.
But, I’m basing a lot of this on a book I read called Out of Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille by Russell Freedman, and also by the tour guide that, you know, that told me about him. One thing that people say is that he lived in darkness, obviously, because he was blind, but he had a bright disposition.
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: This is the kind of kid who was gregarious. He would go sit in the village square. His father made him a cane. I don’t know if you realize that back then blind people walked by tapping their cane in front of [00:09:00] them, so tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, and so you could hear a blind person arrive from a distance. Nowadays, they kind of sweep in front of them with a cane that has a rolling ball. It helps them catch more obstacles, and be more quiet as well. Although I saw a blind man not that long ago in Toulouse who was still tapping.
Elyse: He was still tapping, huh?
Annie: And his father made him a cane, and he would make him a longer cane every year as he grew. And so the little boy would take his cane and go into the village. The house is kind of, it’s a hilly village, so the house is kind of at the bottom of the village. He would walk up the hill and go to the village. And he had a… he had a thing where he would try to memorize the names of the people in his village, and so it became a game. Like, people would talk to him and tell him their name and see if he could remember, and so when he heard them coming, and they were talking to somebody else, he would call out, "Ah, bonjour, Monsieur," blah, blah, blah. [00:10:00] "Bonjour, Madame," blah, blah, blah. And he was kind of a savant child that way, because he remembered all the names and all the voices of the people in the village.
Elyse: And I suppose it is true that people who don’t see develop a much better audition, and so they can hear, you know. And he seemed to have been very bright anyway.
Annie: He was very bright, and had a… You know, when you lose your vision, you don’t have a lot of choices. Most people will turn in on themselves, especially if they lose their sight later in life.
Elyse: Hmm.
Annie: They will stop going out. They will stop doing any sort of socializing, which is really, really terrible for them mostly. But there are some who just like, "Oh, well, it’s my fate. I just have to live with it," and he was like that.
And of course, he was so young that very quickly he didn’t remember what it was like to see. He couldn’t remember what things were. He just lived like a kid who had been blind his whole life. Today in France, we have between 1.7 and 1.8 [00:11:00] million people who live with a significant visual impairment. That’s about 3% of the population.
Elyse: Is that a lot? I don’t even know.
Annie: It’s about average. It’s about average. But of these 3%, only about 207,000 people are very severely sight-impaired or blind.
There’s a lot of variation in blindness. But there are plenty of people who see absolutely nothing, not even day, night. You know, they see nothing.
And about 5% of these 207,000 in France today have been blind since they were children, and these are the ones who really benefit greatly from learning Braille.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: Because that’s their access into literacy, into the world of books and learning.
Early Schooling Breakthrough
Annie: So you can, you have to imagine this little boy, who was gregarious and talked to everybody. [00:12:00] Normally, blind people, blind kids were never taught anything. They didn’t attend school. They did nothing. But because he was such a bright kid, the local priest decided that he would talk to the village school teacher to say, "Look, this kid needs to have a chance to go to school," and the school teacher agreed.
It was very rare, but they agreed, and so a young kid, this was a one-room school, okay? So one kid from his neighborhood would gather, you know, pick him up on the way to school, and they went to school by thems- you know, the two of them. It was different kids every day that would come get him, but he knew all the kids. He was very sociable, which is wonderful. In school, he memorized a lot of things, so multiplication tables, poems, the departments of France, the rivers, and he was really good at it. He could remember. He could accumulate, and he was not lazy at all.
So you would tell him [00:13:00] something once, and he would make a strong effort to remember it, and whereas the other kids, you could tell them 100 times, and they just didn’t care, you know? So he was different. He stood out that way.
And then this priest one day heard that there was a school in Paris where a blind man could read.
Elyse: Yeah.
Royal School In Paris
Annie: And he was like, "What?" And one day he had to go to Paris for something else, and he decided to go to the Royal Academy for the Blind in Paris, which had been set up in 1784.
Elyse: Right. Before the Revolution, right?
Annie: Yes. By a man called Valentin Haüy, who is still well-loved, His name is used in a lot of association for blind people and things like this.
And he went to that school, and he saw for himself that blind people could read, and he was just amazed. And when he went back to the village a few days later, he talked to Louis’ parents and to the school [00:14:00] teacher and said, "Look, he needs to go to school," to this school in Paris. But you had to have a sponsor, you had to have money, and there was not a ton of that in the family. The priest, talked to the local countess, and you can see the castle as you approach the village, to this day. And he said "I would like you to meet this child and sponsor him to go to school, to the School for the Blind," and she agreed.
And so at age 10, he took the four-hour journey by coach to go into the city and came back to Paris for longer vacations, for summer vacation and Christmas vacations, and things like that.
But he spent the rest of his life pretty much at that school, that had been started by Valentin Haüy.
And by then, Valentin was not at the school every day anymore because he had moved on to promote the cause of blind people in other European countries.
Elyse: Hmm.
Annie: So he went and helped, a lot [00:15:00] of this had to do with attitudes of people. They thought blind people could not be taught anything. They thought blind people couldn’t learn anything, would be useless anyway.
And so the ones that were born in an aristocratic family might learn some things, but the others were just beggars or, you know, they lived terrible, terrible lives. And Valentin Haüy was a sighted man, he was a linguist, and he decided that, "You know, I want to help blind people learn how to read." This was his call in life. That was his mission in life. His brother was also a famous mineralogist-crystallographer.
So it was an interesting family there. So Valentin developed this embossing system where you emboss letters just bigger. So you make a big A, a big, like for Annie, big A, big N, big N, you know? And these embossed papers were kind of, [00:16:00] it was a paper with… a waxy paper, so it was expensive, and it was also very rare, very heavy, very large. There were very few books, and so he would teach the kids how to read this embossed sort of writing, but as soon as they left the school, they never saw a book again because nobody else had books like that. You know? It was very rare.
The conditions at the school were not easy. Like most other schools at the time, you know, these internat, what do you call that?
Elyse: A sleeping, a sleeping school.
Annie: Yeah, a sleeping school.
Elyse: I mean, it’s like a, had a huge dormitory. I can just imagine the conditions because they describe it, you know, cold, drafty. This is, we’re talking about buildings that probably were old before they even got turned into the institute, you know? Lining up the beds, you know, without heat in a place that has drafts, it wasn’t healthy.
Annie: Yes, and a lot of the students got sick with tuberculosis, and so did [00:17:00] Louis Past- uh not Pasteur.
Elyse: Braille.
Annie: Braille.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: Another one.
Elyse: Another one, a little bit before Pasteur.
Annie: Right, yes.
Elyse: Yeah. it is kind of a shame. I have visions of things I’ve seen from certain movies, you know, that with all of this advancement in intellectually the idea of helping people who are hard of seeing, that the physical conditions and the sanitary conditions were not really considered.
It’s kind of strange somehow.
Annie: They thought so long as you had a roof over your head, you were fine, but packing a lot of people in, like, a place like that was not conducive to good health really.
Elyse: One thing, I did some of the reading about that, but was it co-ed? Do you know?
Annie: Oh, no. So the Royal School for the Blind was boys only.
Elyse: Oh, boys only.
Annie: Boys only.
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: Later, when they opened the National School for the Blind, that was, girls were admitted.
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: But that came later.
Elyse: That came later.
Annie: Yeah. So he went to that school. He was very happy to learn how to read. He was the sort [00:18:00] of student who did well in math. He did well in music. The sort of things that they taught to kids at the time was, they taught them manual skills, knitting, crocheting, how to make shoes, how to make their own clothes, spinning. They would teach them how to have manual skills because that was something that was, that they could do, right?
Elyse: As an employment, you know?
Annie: As employment later, and it’s just a useful thing to know how to do. The brighter students were taught music and mathematics. And Louis Braille was definitely one of the brightest students. He loved music. The difficulty was they had to memorize everything.
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: And so can you imagine memorizing, we probably have some pianists in the audience. If you have to memorize every piece you ever play, it’s a lot of memorization. But Louis Braille was very good at that, and he was a [00:19:00] proficient pianist, organist, and cello player.
Elyse: And cello.
Annie: And cello, yes. This was a very common occupation among blind people. As a matter of fact, later he became the organist for a major church in…
Elyse: Yes, I saw.
Annie: Right, in Paris.
Elyse: He was actually the organist in two churches. He was in Saint Vincent de Paul. I don’t know where that is, to be honest.
Annie: There was Saint Martin de quelque chose.
Elyse: And there was a Saint Martin also. One of them was in the equivalent of the 15th arrondissement, and I’m not sure where the other one was.
Annie: One was right by, still to this day, it’s very close to the Musée des Arts et Métiers.
Elyse: Okay, so that’s in the third. Yeah, that’s right there, yeah.
Annie: Yeah. Anyway, at the time he was alive, there were 50 other church organists, that were blind in Paris. So this was a major occupation. Piano tuners were often blind people. People who played music for silent movies.
Elyse: That’s later on, of course, right, [00:20:00] yes.
Annie: Were often blind people. They could do a lot of music, and they could memorize a lot of music, but they had to memorize.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: And one of the things that you can do with Braille notation is write music.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: Because that really mattered to him. He wanted to make that.
Elyse: And from what I understand, I mean, it sounds like he was just avid to learn everything. I mean, he was fascinated by mathematics. He wanted to develop a system in mathematics. Who knows what else he could have done if he had lived longer, really?
Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s very true.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Night Writing Inspiration
Annie: So one day, at the school for the blind, a man, a military man called Charles Barbier came. He had invented something called sonography, or night writing.
Elyse: Night writing?
Annie: Yes, and this was a system for military people to pass messages without speaking.
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: So written messages that you could read in the dark without speaking.
Elyse: [00:21:00] So this was basically, initially a spy system.
Annie: Yes.
Elyse: Ah.
Annie: Yes, and it was based on a bit of a convoluted system because it was based on sounds, so you had to memorize these cells that were two by seven, so they were kind of, two across and seven down. So it was a big cell, like a big rectangular cell. He used dashes, between the cells.
Elyse: But embossed so that you could feel them?
Annie: Correct. It was embossed. But each cell represented a sound.
Elyse: A sound, okay.
Annie: And so you had to know the sounds and know how to write the cells to make a word. But typically, for the military, it was very easy words. It was like advance, attack, stop, I don’t know, you know, it was, like, one-word sort of messages. When you try to write a whole book like that it’s like, ah… [00:22:00] my head’s going to explode. Because by the time you get to the end of the page, you don’t remember all the sounds, you don’t remember all the words. It was really convoluted.
Anyway, he, it occurred to this Barbier guy that maybe his system of writing would be helpful to people, blind people. And so he went to the school for the blind, and he made a presentation, and he didn’t convince very many people. They were still using the embossed system, right? They tried it. Louis Braille tried it. They tried to make good use of this system, but it was too cumbersome for long text.
And a very young Louis Braille, who was 12, actually talked to this military man. He was, like, scared half to death to talk to this older man who was a military officer. But he tried to tell him, "Maybe we could tweak your system to make it easier for longer texts." And, Barbier was not [00:23:00] really open to that. He thought that his system was perfectly fine as it was and didn’t need to be changed.
And of course, it’s very different when you try to write the word advance or retreat than, you know, a novel or a poem or… It’s not the same business. And so I don’t think he quite realized how cumbersome it would be, because Barbier could see. I mean, you know, a lot of these people who were the heads of these institutions were sighted people.
But Louis, even though he was young and impressionable, he did not give up easily, and so he decided that he kept working at a system. He wanted a system that was easy. He didn’t like the Barbier system because being two across and seven down, it was too big. Like, his finger couldn’t… It took too much space on his finger to read. And he wanted something more compact.
Elyse: And it’s a code. It’s not like the letters that were embossed. It’s a totally different idea.
Annie: It’s a code. [00:24:00] Each of the signs in the Barbier system is a sound. It’s not a word, it’s a sound.
Elyse: Mm.
Annie: And so you need several cells to make a word.
Elyse: To make a word, right.
Annie: But when your word is simple, maybe, but not when it’s long.
And most students gave up very quickly on this, but Louis Braille continued to work on this because he had some very specific ideas of what he wanted. He wanted something small enough that you could have it under the fingertip. You needed to be able to read it with your fingertips.
Elyse: Just think, though, I mean, this is a 12-year-old kid. I mean, just how brilliant this person was.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: Because how many 12-year-olds would even be interested in creating a system or anything at that point? I mean-
Annie: Correct.
Elyse: … It’s just amazing.
Annie: Yeah. Yeah. He was super bright.
Inventing The Braille Cell
Annie: He had this big aha moment, was when he realized that it would be simpler to have each cell represent a letter and not a sound, and make [00:25:00] it two across and three down. So each cell of the Braille system is two across and three down. It’s easily, with your finger, you can tell what you’re reading.
Elyse: And it’s an alphabet.
Annie: And it’s an alphabet. The other thing that he came upon eventually, was that he did blocks of 10. So the first 10 letters of the alphabet have used the fewest points. So you have A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J. And those forms then are repeated starting with K, except that you use a dot, you add a dot on number three. And so the next 10 letters are the same as the first 10, but they have a dot on three. And then the next group of letters, you add a three and a five, and that gives you the last letters.
And you can use these cells of six to write [00:26:00] 63 characters. To write a number, again, for number one, you go back to letter A, but before you write a number, there’s a special sign that says, now it’s a number. For example, to write 2026, you would do the number sign, and then you do the letter B, J, B, F, because two is a B, J is a zero. The zero is at the end, by the way. Yes, that’s another important thing. B for another two, and F for a six. And so when you understand how the system works, it’s really pretty agile. Like, it’s really not that cumbersome of a system to learn, and there are lots of sighted people who can read Braille. But blind kids who learn it as a kid, really, they read just as fast as I do with my eyes. It’s no different. They can write very quickly as well.
Learning And Writing Braille
Elyse: How?
Annie: Because, yeah, so they use a piece of paper. They use a kind of a [00:27:00] ruler that presents these cells spaced out correctly, and with a stencil, or like a knitting needle or something…
Elyse: Right.
Annie: … you push a little bit against the paper, and you start from right to left, because then the paper’s going to be turned around when you read it.
Elyse: Oh, because it’s pushing it out.
Annie: Yes, you push it down.
Elyse: Okay. Okay.
Annie: So from right, so if I wanted to write my name, I would start to the right, A-N-N-I-E, and then a space, and then continue, right?
Elyse: Okay.
Annie: And then when you turn the page over, you have the letters in the right order. When you encounter numbers, you will do the sign that says now it’s a number and you write your numbers. It’s really like, pretty fast, for people who get used to it.
Now, a lot of adults who go blind nowadays don’t even try to learn Braille because by now we have a lot of tools that [00:28:00] we can use, digital tools or your phone.
Elyse: Audio things, you mean?
Annie: Right, audio things, yeah. So your phone can read anything on it, if you use VoiceOver on an iPhone. I’ve been using VoiceOver to read me books forever. Sometimes they’re not formatted quite right and it will try to read me all the, if there’s page notes at the end of the page, it will read me that, or it will, sometimes it’s not, if it’s not formatted right, it will read me the file name before it moves on to the next page, which is annoying, but…
Elyse: Do you think that, I wonder if it’s not a shame though, in a way, because, all you have to do is have a blip in technology,
It’s still a good idea, I think, to be able to.
Annie: Oh, definitely, definitely. We’ll get to that in a moment, but yes, definitely.
Elyse: I have a different question. When he started working on this, he didn’t immediately perfect it. But did he try it out on the other students in the school?
Definitely.
Yes?
Annie: They loved it.
Elyse: Aha.
Resistance And Global Spread
Annie: So that’s another thing, is the director, there were different directors at different times. Early on, the director of the school [00:29:00] did want nothing to do with Braille, this Braille writing thing.
Elyse: Mm.
Annie: Well, he didn’t ask him to call it Braille. He just said, "You know, it’s just, I came up with this system. Look, the other kids can do it, and it’s actually…" because he taught it to the other kids, and the other kids loved it. It was so much better than the embossed system.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: But the director was not on board with it because, mostly because most of the teachers were sighted, and they did not want to learn a new system. Because if you read embossed letters, for us who can see, that’s super easy. Like, there’s nothing to it. It’s just bigger letters.
But to have to learn Braille all of a sudden, they were like, "Oh, no, no, no. We’re not doing that."
And what convinced them eventually is that one of the assistant directors said, "You know, this system of writing is spreading to other countries, because other kids are learning about this, and they’re going to [00:30:00] have it before we do. So that’s a shame. Like, it was invented here. We should teach it here officially."
Elyse: It got known outside of the school, before the school actually made it the official language.
Annie: Correct. And that is what… It spread like wildfire among the blind communities because it was so easy. And if you think about it, you can adapt it to any language. Any language that has a Roman alphabet, very easily.
Elyse: That has a Roman alphabet. Yes. I was going to ask, yeah.
Annie: By now it’s been adapted to other languages. Even Chinese can be written in Braille, but it had to be adapted for that. African languages are all, you can transcribe them in Braille, it had to be adapted. It has evolved over the years. At first, the French Braille alphabet didn’t have a W because French didn’t have a W. We didn’t use that. But then we started adding words like [00:31:00] wagon, you know, with a W. They added a W. They can add letters. They can make a lot of letters with this. They added another system called the Nemeth Code, which is a code to write higher mathematics, to write physics, to write equations. There are special characters that were added using still the cell, the same cell, the two-by-three cell, that Braille invented. You can write all sorts of things. And as a matter of fact, back to my family relationship, Ruth Craig, Ruth H. Craig, you can look her up, she wrote a book. So this is my husband’s grandmother, Ruth H. Craig. She wrote a book called Learning the Nemeth Braille Code: A Manual for Teachers and Students. And so because, until then, Nemeth had himself written a book, but it was a bit heavy. So she made it simpler, and she was a very good, she was very good at math. She was very good at a lot of things. She was also very [00:32:00] good at French, which surprised me so much when I met her, because she had never really lived in France, but she was good at it. So she adapted the Nemeth code, like exercises, to teach it for both students of higher mathematics and also teachers who were going to teach higher mathematics and physics and such things.
So Braille can be adapted to do all sorts of things. It’s a really, very nimble system. And Braille readers, people who learn Braille as kids, will read and write as fast as you and I. They can use machines. There are machines now. It’s like a little, strip of machinery that will present letters. So it will just… And they put their fingers on there, and they know exactly what’s happening because it’s just pushing little things as you go. And they can write with these machines as well. They push the right letters, and they write just like you would on a typewriter.
Screen Readers Replace Keys
Annie: When things came out like the [00:33:00] BlackBerry, the BlackBerry had a physical keyboard on it. Do you remember that?
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: It was long ago.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: But it had a… You could push buttons, right? And when the BlackBerry went the way of the dodo, that became a problem because now the keyboard is digital. It’s on the screen. And companies like Apple immediately recognized the problem, and they did a system called VoiceOver, it will read you words, and it will also give you kind of… There’s a wheel that you can use with VoiceOver, and you turn that thing around, and you stop on whatever function you want.
Elyse: So are you saying this is a system that’s like a dictaphone, where you speak and it records, or… I don’t know it.
Annie: Your phone can record anything you say.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: It can… Like, if you talk into your phone-
Elyse: But it turns into… it transcribes into writing.
Annie: Yes, into text, yes. There’s all sorts of dictation methods by now, but it had to be developed over time. But Apple was very fast at doing this. [00:34:00] Windows has another system. I can’t remember what it’s called. But you can get your Windows machine to read everything to you as well. It’s not always super easy, but it’s getting easier and easier all the time. There are tools that make this very easy.
Do We Still Need Braille
Annie: So the question is, do you even need Braille anymore? Because if your phone can read you anything, your computer can read you anything, the machines that we see every day in life can talk. You know, like, there are buses, sometimes you’re in the bus and it says, "Next stop is this." And why do they do that? Because there are blind people on there that need to know the next stop is this.
Elyse: And people who can’t read.
Annie: And people who can’t read as well, yes. Yes. And so it’s, nowadays, it’s very easy to adapt the world to blind people. You can also put markers everywhere in the world that say, I’m a post. I’m a garbage can. [00:35:00] I’m a this, I’m a that." And then the blind person can just avoid all these things, which is exactly what a guide dog does.
Shall we talk about guide dogs for a minute?
Elyse: No, let’s finish about Louis.
Annie: Okay.
Elyse: Because I’m touched by the story of his life, and then you can do your doggy story.
That’s why we’re not quite to the end.
Annie: We’re not quite finished.
Elyse: He’s not dead yet, yeah.
Annie: No, he’s not dead yet.
Braille Becomes a Teacher
Elyse: I mean, I found the story of his life so touching, and I thought, you know, sometimes you wonder, people are just sort of born, and they do these incredible things, and then they’re gone. I mean, he developed the tuberculosis very early on once he was in this institution, and he was so brilliant that when he was 13 and 14, they made him an assistant. He was teaching the other kids already. I
He was exceptional. I mean, he was really exceptional.
Annie: But he was not the only one. That’s how the school worked. They would keep on some of the better students, they would keep them on and offer them jobs.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: And it was funny because he became a teacher at age 20, and at age 20, they gave him his own room. He stopped sleeping in a [00:36:00] dormitory. He still had to wear the uniform, but he had some kind of gilded and gold, red and gold marking that said he was a teacher. And it was another five years before he was a full teacher. It was a long training process. But yes, he stayed there, yeah.
Elyse: He stayed there, and it was really his home, you know? His whole existence was based on everything that he did there.
Braille Writing Machines Tour
Elyse: Now, we were talking a little bit about in 1847, he apparently invented or tried to invent a machine that would be basically a machine that would write the Braille, you know?
He was this multi-talented type of person who was constantly inquisitive about learning new things, you know?
Annie: Right, and when you go to the place of his birth, you will see a lot of different machines that were invented to read, well, to write Braille and to, because to read it, you just need fingers. I mean…
Elyse: Right. Right. Right.
Annie: But to write it, there were lots of machines invented. There were lots of, some of them were [00:37:00] faster, some of them were smaller, all sorts of things. And it’s interesting to see, actually. And it’s funny because the, so the person who gives, who gave me the tour, and I think he’s the one who gives the tours all the time, he’s very eager to give tours. The poor man doesn’t get enough visitors, so please go to, if you have a car and you’re in Paris, you need to go. It’s really interesting. He’s a kind of Santa Claus type of person. He has a belly and a big white beard. And he’s very friendly. Clearly can read Braille very well. He can see, too, he might have been a teacher for the blind or something. I don’t know. I didn’t ask any personal questions, but he’s a fascinating person. Very sweet. Very, very sweet. Very accommodating, because I kept calling him, saying, "Oh, I’m late, I’m late. I’m coming. And don’t close, I’m still coming." And he waited for me. He was very sweet.
Elyse: He was probably excited to get you as a visitor, too, really.
Annie: Yeah, he was really sweet. But you need to go, really, if you’re anywhere near there. You need a car, though. If you don’t have a car, I don’t think you can make it to [00:38:00] Coupvray.
Tuberculosis and Final Years
Elyse: But so poor Louis, apparently by 1840, so in 1840, he was 31. His health was so bad. He was really weak. He was having hemorrhaging. I mean, he had a really bad tuberculosis, and what I find interesting and sort of sad is that they never tried to send him away for cures or anything like that.
Annie: Well, he went home to Coupvray, and his mother, who was getting old, but she would, you know, patch him up and feed him well and-
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: … and fresh air and things. But-
Elyse: It didn’t help.
Annie: … But yeah, yeah, it wasn’t enough.
Elyse: I mean, this is a time when tuberculosis was rampant anyway.
Annie: There was no cure. You knew you were going to die of it.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: Yeah.
Elyse: So he got to the point where he was so weak that he could no longer teach, I don’t really know how that happened. In other words, he went to stay with his brother for the last couple of years of his life. I know that. His brother was, by that time, living in Paris, and his brother really did help him a lot. It is at his brother’s house that he died, [00:39:00] surrounded by a bunch of family and friends in 1852, and he was what, what, 40, 43 barely?
Annie: Yeah, he was, he had just turned 43 two or three days before. Yeah.
Elyse: Oh. So the last few years of his life were apparently very, very difficult. But he, I assume that by then he knew that his system had been officially adopted, because it had been.
Annie: Yes.
Elyse: And that it had spread and it was recognized. Did he ever make any money from the system?
Annie: I don’t think so.
Elyse: No, huh?
Annie: No, he was paid as a teacher and as an organist, and that was it.
Public Proof of Braille
Annie: So at one point, the Royal School for the Blind became the National School for the Blind. it was a big deal because it was a new building.
It’s where the school still is to this day. It’s in the 7th arrondissement. And they, with much pomp and circumstance, they opened the school, this new school, and Braille was there. He was one of the professors. And that’s when [00:40:00] Braille the system got really recognized because he, as part of the opening celebrations, they had a big crowd of people that came for this special opening. They had two little girls do a trick.
So they had a sighted girl and her blind sister. So the sighted girl read a poem, and the blind sister wrote it as she went, and then she turned the page around and read it back. And people were like, "Oh my goodness." And there was one guy in the audience who said, "Well, she might have just memorized the poem beforehand." And so they said, "Ah, quite right. So you read something to her, anything you wish." And he dug out a theater ticket that he had in his pocket that said the name of the play and the date and the place and the time and whatever, and he just read that. And the little [00:41:00] girl transcribed it, and then turns the page over and reads it completely perfectly. And everybody was like, "Oh, that’s magic," you know? And that’s what convinced everyone that Braille was a very easy system to use.
And it just caught on like wildfire among all the schools for the blind, because it was so much easier than anything else that they had thought of before. So yeah. So he did see that bef-
Elyse: He did see that.
Annie: Yes, he did see that.
Fame After Death Panthéon
Annie: The sad thing though is that he was a superstar in blind circles.
Elyse: Mm-hmm.
Annie: But when he died, not a single line was written in a newspaper about his death. It went completely unnoticed. He was not part of the intelligentsia, because he was a blind guy, and-
Elyse: He was a blind guy.
Annie: … Who cares about the blind guy, right?
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: And [00:42:00] that was really, really sad, I think. Now, of course, he’s now in the Panthéon, showing that we have come to our senses.
Elyse: So this is the thing. It was in 1952, the government decided to take him, take his remains to the Panthéon, and I understand that there was a problem with the family about that anyway.
But I’m curious because I don’t know, and I couldn’t really find any information about it. It was the 100th anniversary. It was the centennial of his death. That was the moment that they decided it was time for him to go to the Panthéon. What made them decide to do that?
Annie: Well, the president gets to decide who goes in the Panthéon, so the president at the time decided that he should be in the Panthéon.
Elyse: So I guess by then it was just that he had become that famous?
Annie: Right. Right. Yes, because clearly it’s a worldwide system. It’s a huge advance in the well-being and the education of blind people. I mean, giving them access to books and [00:43:00] education was huge. It completely changed their lives.
Reading Braille Today
Annie: And I have seen, like, so my involvement with guide dogs, I have met a lot of blind people. I never knew any blind people before, but I met many of them. And this fairly young man, Nicolas, who was the first, the owner of the first guide dog we ever raised, I saw him read. And it’s really interesting because we have some Braille books. Because of my husband’s grandmother, we have some Braille books at the house. They’re mostly kids books. But we got them out when Nicolas was visiting one time, and he doesn’t speak any English, and those Braille books were in English.
Elyse: Ah.
Annie: But he could read all the words, all the letters. He just didn’t know what the word meant sometimes.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: He recognized a few of the words.
Elyse: Oh.
Annie: But he told us, okay, he would spell it out, and some of the words he knew, like, you know. And also he told us that there are, in Braille you have contractions. So you have some words, like common words like les, [00:44:00] des, articles usually, 100, things like that. They are written by a contraction, and they have different contractions in English, for the, they, them, things like that.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: And so he was like, "Oh, that’s probably a contraction, but I don’t know which one it is," you know? But from the context, we could tell him, "Oh, that’s a they," you know?
Elyse: Right. Right.
Annie: But they can read each other’s language. But if they know the language, they recognize the words. If they don’t know the language, they can’t recognize the words.
Elyse: Like us?
Annie: Like us. Just like us.
Elyse: Just like us.
Annie: Like us.
Elyse: Just like us, yeah.
Annie: It’s not that different.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: I have seen, like, I have gone to the public library in Toulouse, and they have a large collection of Braille books. And so you have to ask for them, they bring them out. They’re massive books. I mean, they’re not as big as the embossed stuff, but they’re still big books. They just bring him the book, he opens it, and he starts reading, and within, like, seconds he’s turning the page and moving on to the next page and on and on and on and on. It’s like witchcraft when you see that happening. But, it’s just their [00:45:00] language. They understand this stuff. It’s… And it’s not that difficult. I mean, you can learn how to read it with your eyes as well. It’s not that strange.
Elyse: It’s fascinating to me, me who has spent years doing other kinds of things, you know, in terms of drawing and painting and sewing and everything. I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to learn to read with my fingers. It’s very, it’s so different.
Annie: It would be a mind bender.
Elyse: Yep.
Annie: But if you ever want to challenge your brain, it’s a good way to challenge your brain.
Elyse: Yeah, I bet it is. I just want to make a comment, because I asked you this morning if you had seen it, but at the end of doing a little bit of research about his life, I discovered that you can go onto YouTube and see the film of the procession of him going to the Panthéon in 1952, and I suggest and I recommend to anybody to watch this. It is so moving. They had all of the children from the School of the Blind and from other parts of the country and they brought I don’t know [00:46:00] how many thousands of people who came, who were blind, besides the seeing people, to honor him when the procession took his rest to the Panthéon. And it’s just quite an amazing thing to see.
Annie: There are by now a lot of schools for the blind all through France and all through the world. It’s an overnight school. You’re not there for, you know, unless you live nearby, and then you can go home every night. But, it’s a different world.
Elyse: Yeah.
Annie: But it’s really, really important that young people who are blind are given an opportunity to learn, because there’s a lot of jobs they can do. There’s a lot you can do even if you cannot see. That, I cannot say this enough. You don’t realize how able the disabled are if we just give them adaptations, if we just give them what they need to be able to do the things that they need to do. There are some things they’re always going to be worse at than others, like, you know, I imagine for a blind person to be a commercial cook would be [00:47:00] difficult.
Elyse: It would be difficult.
Annie: Yeah. But they can cook for themselves. They can. They, you know, it’s a little slower, and then they need to be careful not to-
Elyse: Put too much spices in.
Annie: … Spices or let, not let things run over and catch fire and things like that, yeah. But they can. You can be taught, and it’s really interesting to see how much they can do, how much they can participate. I’m a strong advocate for, having met many blind people, it can happen to anyone, whether it’s by from a young age or later in life your sight becomes a problem, because of glaucoma, because of macular degeneration, diabetes, you name it, an accident, all sorts of things.
And it’s not the end of your life, if you decide that you are going to learn how to adapt, and that’s difficult. Emotionally, that’s really, really difficult. But if you’ve learned to read already, if you know words, if you’re literate, then learning Braille is not as difficult, [00:48:00] and also continuing to engage with the world is really, really important in my opinion.
(Mid-roll ad spot)
Why Braille Still Matters
Annie: So the question I was trying to get to, and we’re going to run long, but that’s okay, is Braille still necessary today? And the answer is yes, because that’s what opens, literacy. That’s what makes it possible for you to read and write both. Because if you just get your phone to read you everything, you can respond. Like, you can dictate into your phone, right? I don’t know if you ever do that, Elyse, but it’s-
Elyse: No, I don’t.
Annie: … But lots of people dictate everything into their phone. It’s just that the phone makes mistakes and misunderstands some of the things that you say. And if you can’t go back and proofread it, then your text message is going to be full of errors. And in a professional setting you don’t want that. I mean, if it’s just to write to your friends, it’s not a big deal. But you want to be able to proofread [00:49:00] what you’ve written. if you’re literate, you can get your phone to read you one letter at a time, and know if it was spelled correctly or not, and fix it. So, Braille will teach you spelling, punctuation, grammar, sentence structure, how to speak, you know, how to write well. And you can write yourself. You can take notes. When you know Braille, you can take notes. You can go to class and have your Braille tablet and write your notes just like anybody else. It doesn’t put you at a disadvantage, whereas if you can’t take notes, I mean, I don’t know about you, Elyse, but even to prepare a trip or something like that, I take-
Elyse: I take notes.
Annie: … copious numbers of notes, yes.
Elyse: All the time.
Annie: I won’t be able to remember everything.
Elyse: No.
Annie: Right, and well, blind people are no different. You know, they need to take notes.
Elyse: But that’s also because neurologically it is a proven fact that there is a connection between what you do with your hand and what you do with your brain, and just listening is not enough to make that [00:50:00] connection.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Elyse: So I did have once in one of the classes I, when I was doing some teaching at the aeronautic school, we did have one year a young woman who was, I don’t know if she was completely blind, but she was certainly hard of seeing. But she didn’t stay, and I don’t know if the reason she didn’t stay in the class was because the content was too complicated for her or there were other reasons, you know. But it was, it was interesting to see.
I was just going to say, though, listening to you, that you like to listen to audiobooks, but it is not the same. The ultimate proof in a way, is that I bet for a person who is hard of seeing is it’s much better to read a book with Braille than to listen because you retain it more.
Annie: It is possible, but sight impairments can be… I mean, you can do both. Like, you can listen and take notes as well. That’s what I tend to do.
Anyway, to get back to is Braille necessary today? There’s lots of studies that show that a high [00:51:00] percentage of employed blind people know Braille.
Elyse: Know braille.
Annie: If they don’t know Braille, it’s hard for them to get employment. They can listen, but they can’t proofread, and it’s… if you have to write any document, it’s kind of hard.
That said, it’s possible nowadays to get away with not knowing Braille much, much, much, much easier than it was a long time ago. But if you think about it, if you know Braille, even in, around your own house, you can put a little sticker in braille that says, "Oh, that’s the tomato cans," because you know… the cans.
Elyse: Doesn’t talk to you.
Annie: It does not talk to you.
Elyse: No.
Annie: And nowadays you can point to the code, and it will tell you what it is if you can get your phone to see the code, because the code is not embossed. So, you have to turn the can around, like, until the phone can tell, "Ah, yes, I know what this is." It slows everything down.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: And the fast way is you just write, like, "tomato can", you know? This, that. Just a little sticker in [00:52:00] Braille and there you are. It gives them a lot more freedom in everyday life, simple things that we take for granted, like, you know, around the house. Soit’s not either/or. You can use the digital tools and also use Braille. You can do both.
Jobs and Independence
Annie: Nowadays, blind people are often, in France anyway, they’re often musicians still, piano tuners, physical therapists, a lot of physical, pysiotherapists, as they say in other countries. A lot of blind people can be teachers, professors, researchers, writers, software developer. I know several who are software developers.
Elyse: How? How to become a software developer?
Annie: Because writing software is just like writing text.
Elyse: You just write it in Braille.
Annie: You write it in Braille, and the tablet translates everything.
Elyse: Huh.
Annie: Data analysts. You can be public speakers. You can be podcasters. There’s a bunch of podcasters who are blind. They can work in call centers. They can do human resources, project managers, [00:53:00] consultants of all sorts. With the accessible computer tools, they can do, you know, many traditional office roles can be done. Manual labor, it’s more difficult, but I’m sure some of them, can do it.
Helping Blind People Guide Dogs
Annie: Now, one last thing. What to do if you encounter a blind person? I want to put this in there because I was petrified whenever there was a blind person around me. I would just jump out of the way and never talk to them. I was always dying to pet the dog, but I didn’t know if I could or if I should, so I didn’t.
So let me give you some dos and don’ts.
You never, ever grab them unless they’re going to be hit by a car, okay? If there’s an immediate danger situation, yes. If you can tell they’re having trouble, like, unsure what to do, whatever, you go, you face them, and you say, "Hello. Can I help you across the street? Can I help you find something? Do you need [00:54:00] assistance?" You just ask them if they need help, and they will very often say, "No, thank you." And that’s fine. You need to be prepared for the "No, thank you", but don’t grab them. You can offer, but maybe they’re just taking a while to do something. Maybe they’re waiting for someone. Who knows, you know?
If that person has a guide dog, do not distract the guide dog when it’s working. So if they’re walking, going anywhere, the dog is working, paying attention to all sorts of things, don’t pet them, don’t touch them, don’t talk to them.
Now, if they are waiting for the bus and just sitting there, you can, again, go up to the person, say hello to the person, say, "You have a beautiful dog. Can I pet your dog? What’s your dog’s name?" But first talk to the person, okay? Do not pet a guide dog without… Just like don’t pet people’s dogs without asking.
Elyse: Right.
Annie: It’s the same, you know, talk to the person first. For blind people who love [00:55:00] dogs in general, and some do, some don’t, it’s fine, it helps them gain confidence to go out into the world because the dog will do a lot of simple things for them that makes their life easier. And it gives them companionship at home as well. And it forces them to go out, just like it forces anybody to go out. If you have a dog, you gotta go walk the dog, right? You have to get out. You can’t stay at home all the time. So that’s a good thing. But guide dogs are not magic. They’re great helpers, but not, not magic. They avoid obstacles naturally. The dog does not want to hit the post or, you know, fall into a hole or walk into the garbage can. So they will avoid the obstacles naturally, and they have a harness that’s, they have a leather harness usually and a handle that’s rigid. And so when the dog moves, the person can feel that the dog is moving, and they just follow the dog. Dogs are taught to look up for branches.
For a [00:56:00] dog, I mean, branches over a fence or something rarely hit the dog, right? because they’re too low. But they might hit the blind person’s face. So those dogs are taught to look up as well as down. They’re constantly looking around, and they’re also taught to, well, when they’re very young, we teach them to sit before they step up or down. So if the dog stops, it means there’s a step here, up or down. They’re taught direction words, left, right, stop, behind, ahead, go, that, that sort of things. They don’t cross the street until the person tells them to, okay? You cannot teach a dog to decide when to cross the street. That is not happening. You don’t want to do that. So when a blind person needs to cross the street, they will stop and listen. They listen for traffic. If it’s an intersection they know well, they can do this fairly quickly. If it’s not an intersection they know well, it might take them a couple of minutes to decide how [00:57:00] the traffic pattern works. Guide dogs can help blind people find an empty seat, and so they go to the empty seat. They put their nose on it, and the person will just run their hands down the dog’s body and touch the seat. The guide dog can help the blind person recognize an ATM or a ticket machine.
They kind of generalize. They’ve been taught ticket machine, ATM, you know? So they can recognize them all. The door. They know what a door looks like, and if a blind person arrives at a building, a school, a house, whatever, the dog will take them to the door. They can recognize an elevator, the door of the elevator. They can lead their hands to the button. Because if you know you’re in front of the elevator but you don’t know where the damn button is, you might be feeling around for the button for a while, right? The dog will put their head under your nose, and that’s why they need to be a certain size, and will lift your ha- to your [00:58:00] hand to where the button is, and then you can call the elevator.
Escalators, they, normal dogs don’t like to take escalators. It frightens them, but guide dogs are taught to take escalators. All sorts of little things like that makes, you know, makes life easier for blind people. But there are plenty of blind people who want nothing to do with a guide dog. They just don’t want a dog.
Elyse: They don’t want… But is it because they’re afraid of the dog, or because they think it’s too complicated to work with a dog?
Annie: Because a blind person who’s learned how to navigate the world well might move faster without a dog. I’ve seen blind people who zip along the city much faster than I do. Because they’re just so used to it. They’re so comfortable. You see them in Paris. There are places in Paris where I see people, see blind people, they’re taught very well, but they need to be taught the place. Whereas with a guide dog, you could go to a different place, and the guide dog can extrapolate, you know, this is not the same environment as normal, [00:59:00] but that’s a garbage can. I know what to do, you know? Don’t run into it. Things like that.
Guide dogs are fantastic, but there are some blind people who, they just don’t want a dog. And if you don’t want a dog, period, you shouldn’t have a dog, you know?
Retired Guide Dog Igor
Annie: So, and I should say, Igor, the retired guide dog, lies here at my right. It was such a difficult thing when we raised him, and he went away to work. It was a hole. He left a hole. And we saw him several times after he started working, and that was wonderful. And then we stopped seeing him because there was a fight that was really stupid. Anyway, and we stopped seeing him. And then I wasn’t sure if we’d get him back when he retired, and we did, and I’m so happy.
Now, he’s a pain in the butt because he’s a big dog, and he has some physical difficulties now, so-
Elyse: because he’s an old guy!
Annie: … [01:00:00] He’s an old man. He’s an old man. He doesn’t listen to anything I say anymore. Like, as soon as he retired…
Elyse: Good for him.
Annie: As soon as he retired, I was showing off, the day after he came to live with us after he retired, I was showing off. I said, "Igor, sh-" I was trying to get him to show me the bench. There was a bench right there, and I said: "Siège, siège." That’s, that was the command. He knows this. He does this every day, you know? He looked at me like… You know where it is. You find it, you damn-
Elyse: No, but you know what he was telling you? He was telling you he is retired. And that is it. He has worked his butt off, you know? Yeah. He was a lovely, wonderful… I remember him as a puppy. He said, "Why should I work now? I’m retired. I got my pension. Look, I’m in this nice house. There you go." You know?
Annie: Yes, yes. So it’s, it was a wonderful thing to get him back, and I’m going to baby him as long as he can hop along. And he’s really, he’s at the point where he’s hopping along because he [01:01:00] blew an ACL in his right knee. And so now I have to move him around in a big stroller. I’m the fool with a big dog stroller pushing Igor around. But I mean, he gets off. He will walk some by himself. But, you know, I like to do a 5K walk, and there’s no way he could do a 5K walk without the stroller, so there you are.
Closing Thoughts on Braille
Annie: I love the dogs, and I think blind people have just as much right as I do for a good life. And I… I’m so glad someone like Louis Braille came into the picture and found a way that’s simple enough that most blind people, at least the ones who go blind at a young age, can learn it, and that they have access to knowledge and to the same things that the rest of us do.
Elyse: Sounds good to me.
Annie: All right. Thank you, Elyse. We went long again.
Elyse: We went long again.
Annie: Au revoir.
Elyse: Au revoir.
[01:02:00]
Copyright
Annie Sargent: The join us in France Travel Podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent and copyright 2026 by Addicted to France. It is released under a Creative Comments, attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.[01:03:00] [01:04:00]