MILLION HAMMER BLOWS

Evening Star, Issue 20666, 13 December 1930, Page 15

MILLION HAMMER BLOWS

WORLD OF THE BLIND MAKING BRAILLE MARS. t ? . h— • , [ Four years’ work, embodying inori than 1,0U(J,000;- Rammer blows- by, exjpert, embossers, dm been expebejed by tho 'National institute for thq„;Blin<L«i>y tho preparation of a , school. geography for blind, boys qndgirls. ■ ; ' a ■ ' .■■ , Tbo book is ono dealing -with' ilid British Islcjs, in tho, ‘ Human iGepgna■phy ’ scried, ,and, although 'of ' inodest size in the;, printed oditiomit occupies seven . largo volumes, weighing 211 b, when transcribed into Braille. Maps and diagrams are, an important feature of tho .work, and it was oh those that the institute’s late embossej' spent the last three years of bis life. At tho time of his death, last year, lip had completed only 114 r ’6f. ilk 120 needed to illustrate the book', and. anf other moebanic had then to bo 1 trainbi| to emboss ijio remaining, six. > ’ Tho work of expressing'tho illustrations in such a way that they could bo readily understood by blind children demanded specialist treatment. In ahy Braille-picture a. lino is actually a lino of dots, biit in the ease of theso dia| grams the lines varied in thickness, ami bad therefore, to bo formed of, bigger or smaller dots respectively. A coastline, for example, was usually heavier than 0119 indicating tlio boundary of a county, and the “tint” of dots indicating the ,sea had to be shown lighter than that intended to indicate mountain ranges. ,Moro than thirty sizes ,of punches were needed to express theso varying degrees of >“ colour.” At least, three blows with tho embossers’'hammer wero required to make each dot, and as the ordinary diagram contains between ,‘S,OOO and 5,000 of these dots it is evident that the embossers must have struck more than 1.000,000 hammer blows in the course of their work on this ono book.