Braille (brāl), in astronomy, a small asteroid asteroid, planetoid, or minor planet, small body orbiting the sun. More than 10,000 asteroids have orbits sufficiently well known to have been cataloged and named; thousands more exist.
..... Click the link for more information. notable because it has the same atypical geologic composition as the larger asteroid Vesta Vesta (vĕs`tə), in astronomy, fourth asteroid to be discovered. It was found in 1807 by H. Olbers.
..... Click the link for more information. . In 1999 the space probe Deep Space 1 passed within 16 mi (26 km) of Braille's surface, the closest flyby ever of an asteroid. Braille measures only 1.3 mi (2.1 km) by 0.6 mi (1 km). Its orbit is highly elliptical; its periapsis, or closest point to the sun, being midway between earth and Mars, and its apoapsis, or furthest point from the sun, is more than three times further from the sun than the earth is. In addition, much of Braille's orbit is a considerable distance above or below the ecliptic, the plane in which the planets circle the sun. Because of its orbit and geologic composition, it has been suggested that Braille was torn from Vesta, which has a huge crater, as the result of Vesta's collision with another celestial body.
Universal system of writing and printing for the blind. The Frenchman Louis Braille invented the system in 1824. Characters embossed on paper are read by passing the fingers lightly over the manuscript. The system is based on a matrix of six dots arranged in two columns of three. The 63 combinations possible in this framework stand for letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and common words such as and and the. A Braille code for English was not adopted until 1932. Modifications also exist for other languages, for mathematical and technical material, and for musical notation. Braille may be handwritten—from right to left—using a stylus to press dots into a piece of paper between hinged metal plates; when the sheet is turned over, the dots face up and are read from left to right. Braille typewriters and electric embossing machines are also used.
Braille
Braille [brāl]
..... Click the link for more information. notable because it has the same atypical geologic composition as the larger asteroid Vesta Vesta (vĕs`tə), in astronomy, fourth asteroid to be discovered. It was found in 1807 by H. Olbers.
..... Click the link for more information. . In 1999 the space probe Deep Space 1 passed within 16 mi (26 km) of Braille's surface, the closest flyby ever of an asteroid. Braille measures only 1.3 mi (2.1 km) by 0.6 mi (1 km). Its orbit is highly elliptical; its periapsis, or closest point to the sun, being midway between earth and Mars, and its apoapsis, or furthest point from the sun, is more than three times further from the sun than the earth is. In addition, much of Braille's orbit is a considerable distance above or below the ecliptic, the plane in which the planets circle the sun. Because of its orbit and geologic composition, it has been suggested that Braille was torn from Vesta, which has a huge crater, as the result of Vesta's collision with another celestial body.
Braille
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The alphabet and the digits 0–9 in the modern Braille system. Each letter or digit consists …
(credit: © Merriam-Webster Inc.)
Braille
Louis . 1809--52, French inventor, musician, and teacher of the blind, who himself was blind from the age of three and who devised the Braille system of raised writing
Braille [brāl]
(communications)
A system of written communication for the blind in which letters are represented by raised dots over which the trained blind person moves the fingertips.
| (human language) | braille - /breyl/ (Often capitalised) A class of
writing systems, intended for use by blind and low-vision
users, which express glyphs as raised dots. Currently
employed braille standards use eight dots per cell, where a
cell is a glyph-space two dots across by four dots high; most
glyphs use only the top six dots. Braille was developed by Louis Braille (pronounced /looy bray/) in France in the 1820s. Braille systems for most languages can be fairly trivially converted to and from the usual script. Braille has several totally coincidental parallels with digital computing: it is binary, it is based on groups of eight bits/dots and its development began in the 1820s, at the same time Charles Babbage proposed the Difference Engine. Computers output Braille on braille displays and braille printers for hard copy. British Royal National Institute for the Blind. |
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