National Braille Literacy Month January, honors Louie Braille (born on January 4, 1809), creator of the braille system that now bears his name. Braille created his universal code system for reading and writing to be used by people who are blind, or visually impaired at the age of 15. He lost his sight after an accident left him blind at three-years-old, while he was playing with tools in his father’s harness shop. A tool slipped and plunged into his right eye. He subsequently published the first Braille book, Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them, in 1829, at age 20. Unfortunately, for Braille, sympathetic ophthalmia and total blindness followed. Nevertheless, he became a notable musician and excelled as an organist. Upon receiving a scholarship, he went in 1819 to Paris to attend the National Institute for Blind Children, and from 1826 he taught there.

Braille became interested in a system of writing, exhibited at the school by Charles Barbier, in which a message coded in dots symbolizing phonetic sounds was embossed on cardboard. At 15, he worked out an adaptation by writing with a simple instrument, that met the needs of the sightless. He later took this system, which consists of a six-dot code in various combinations, and adapted it to musical notation. He published a treatise on his type system in 1829, and in 1837 he published a three-volume Braille edition of a popular history schoolbook.

During the last years of his life Braille was ill with tuberculosis. A century after his death, Braille’s remains (minus his hands, which were kept in his birthplace of Coupvray) were moved to Paris for burial in the Pantheon.

Our second celebration today is:

National Science Fiction Day is celebrated on this date as it is the official birth date of famed science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who is thought to have been born January 2nd, 1920. Mr. Asimov is responsible for some incredible works of science fiction literature during his lifetime, such as “Nightfall” and the “Foundation Trilogy”.

Isaac Asimov, originally a biochemist, was known to be one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written, or edited more than 500 books. He is widely considered a master of hard science fiction and was a long-time member and vice president of Mensa International.

Asimov was responsible for a variety of terms related to National Science Fiction Day. He coined the term “robotics” in his 1941 story “Liar!”. In addition, he also came up with the term “spome” in a paper entitled, “There’s No Place Like Spome” which was published in Atmosphere in Space Cabins and Closed Environments. Eventually the term “psychohistory” was created in his foundation stories to name a fictional branch of science, which combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to make general predictions about the future behavior of very large groups of people.

Asimov was among the Big Three of sci-fi literature – joined by Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein. Obviously, we can also list Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, as well as many others.

Who are your favourite sci-fi authors?