print	more	even	save	infect
teach	have to	news	patient	share
call	know	by	learn

Louis was from a small town (51) ______ Coupvray, near Paris—he was born on January 4 in

1809. Louis became blind (52) ______ accident, when he was 3 years old. Deep in his Dad’s

harness workshop, Louis tried to be like his Dad, but it went very wrong; he grabbed an awl, a

sharp tool for making holes, and the tool slid and hurt his eye. The wound got infected, and the

(53) ____ spread, and soon, Louis was blind in both eyes.

All of a sudden, Louis needed a new way to learn. He stayed at his old school for two (54)

_____ years, but he couldn’t learn everything just by listening. Things were looking up when Louis got a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris, when he was 10. But even there, most of the teachers just talked at the students. The library had 14 huge books with raised letters that were very hard to read. Louis was (55) ______.

  Then in 1821, a former soldier named Charles Barbier visited the school. Barbier (56) ______ his invention called “night writing,” a code of 12 raised dots that let soldiers share top-secret information on the battlefield without (57) ______ having to speak. Unfortunately, the code was too hard for the soldiers, but not for 12-year-old Louis!

  Louis trimmed Barbier’s 12 dots into 6, ironed out the system by the time he was 15, then published the first-ever braille book in 1829. But did he stop there? No way! In 1837, he added symbols for math and music. But since the public was skeptical, blind students had to study braille on their own. Even at the Royal Institution, where Louis taught after he graduated, braille wasn’t (58) ______ until after his death. Braille began to spread worldwide in 1868, when a group of British men, now (59) ______ as the Royal National Institute for the Blind, took up the cause.

  Now practically every country in the world uses braille. Braille books have double-sided pages, which (60) ______ a lot of space. Braille signs help blind people get around in public spaces. And, most important, blind people can communicate independently, without needing print.

(From Louis Braille)