BRAILLE CENTENARY

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6992, 19 August 1929, Page 12

BRAILLE CENTENARY

HISTORY OF INVENTION. The centenary of the invention of the Braille system of embossed printing, which opened a new epoch in the teaching of the blind by touch, occurs this year, and the event is being marked by a special effort, in which the cooperation of all musicians is being sought, to raise funds for the publication of literary, scientific, religious, and musical works as yet inaccessible to the blind (writes a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph). The credit for the first really successful attempt to educate the blind belongs to a Frenchman, Valentin Hauy. By the use of embossed paper he taught a blind beggar boy to read, and, encouraged by this success, extended his efforts, with the most beneficial results. He not only produced the first printing in raised characters, pacing the way for a development which reached its ultimate triumph in Braille’s wonderful invention, but it was due to his labours that the Institution Nationale dcs Jeunes Avengles was founded in Paris.

An important change was introduced by a French officer, Charles Barbier, who substituted embossed dots for embossed lines, and at the same time invented the slate for writing. It was really upon this system that Braille constructed his own great plan, perfected in 3 829. Braille, who was born at Conpuray, about 23 miles from Paris, had become blind as the result of an accident. He was a pupil, and afterwards a professor, at the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles, and carefully studied all the methods of teaching the blind based upon the use of arbitrary characters. He found that Barbier’s discovery most closely approximated to his own conception of what was required, and, by reducing the number of dots and effecting other changes, ho evolved the system which has made his name -World famous.