 Braille worked tirelessly on his ideas , and his system was largely completed by 1824 , when he was fifteen years old . From Barbier 's night writing , he innovated by simplifying its form and maximizing its efficiency . He made uniform columns for each letter , and he reduced the twelve raised dots to six . He published his system in 1829 , and by the second edition in 1837 had discarded the dashes because they were too difficult to read . Crucially , Braille 's smaller cells were capable of being recognized as letters with a single touch of a finger . 
