When Louis Braille was three years old, he became blind in both eyes as the result of an accident in his father’s harness shop. His father, determined that Louis should not suffer the usual fate of blind persons at that time and become a beggar, kept him in the village school until he was ten and then entered him in the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris. Louis learned to read from the three books engraved in large raised letters in the Institution library, did exceptionally well both in academic work and at the piano and organ, and was soon helping to teach the younger children.
In 1819, the same year that Louis entered the Institution, Charles Barbier, an army captain, reported to the Academy of Sciences on a system of raised dots and dashes which enabled soldiers to read messages in the dark. Later Barbier brought his invention to the Institution. After experimenting with it, young Braille produced a writing system using only dots, from which he generally devised 63 separate combinations representing the letters in the French alphabet (at the request of an Englishman, he later added “w”), accents, punctuation marks, and mathematical signs. Although government bureaucracy prevented immediate official adoption, his system was used at the Institution as long as the director, Dr. Pignier, was in office. Pignier’s successor insisted on returning to the officially approved former system, but students continued to use Braille’s method secretly. Eventually, its superiority was established and it was adopted throughout France.
1. Louis Braille’s father most likely kept his son at home until the age of ten because he __________.
2. Louis Braille did all of the following things except __________.
3. Charles Barbier originally devised his writing system for __________.
4. We can assure that all of the following items were represented in Louis Braille’s original system except __________.
5. The Institution was not able to adopt Braille’s method officially for some time because __________.