June 3: The Andrew Heiskell Library (b. 1895)

The New York Public Library is marking the 115th anniversary of the founding of the Talking Book and Braille Service in the US and in New York City. It started in 1895 with 57 braille books, a free circulating library set up by a blind man, Richard Randall Ferry (1839-1906). Ferry had been a prosperous hat manufacturer before becoming blind in 1891; he had the resources and the drive to get something like this started. By the time of Ferry's death (according to his obituary) there were 10,000 volumes.

In 1909, Ferry's assistant on the project, and one of the library's trustees, educator Clara A. Williams, wrote a plea in the New York Times, defending New York Point System against other braille formats. Her letter points to the state of flux such efforts faced just a century ago: "It seems a dreadful thing to me, for those living in New York State, and New York City, to allow any persons to come in from other States with a system of print which can be proved to be inferior, and tell us what we should do in our public schools, &c.... Miss Keller is certainly a wonderful woman, but she would, it seems to me, be biased in favor of any type for which her friends stood and it would be most natural for her to take the stand chosen by her teacher..." There were also concerns about whether the library would include a Bible (when "nearly every reader at the library has been presented with a Bible and has it in his own home").

The collection became part of the NYPL in 1903, and expanded over the years, in size, in format, and services offered. The technological history of recordings in the twentieth century is reflected in how audio books were prepared for blind readers over the years: hard discs, flexible discs, cassettes, and digital files have all taken their turn, in tandem with the devices required to play them.

February 26: John Puleston Jones (1862-1925)

The Welsh celebrate St. David's Day this weekend, so it seems timely to note the birthdate of a Welshman.

John Puleston Jones was born on this date in 1862, at Llanbedr. He was 18 months old when he became blind from an accidental injury. His mother (who wrote poetry as "Mair Clwyd") is credited with insisting that he learn independence skills in childhood. Puleston Jones was an excellent student through school, and after a year at the College for the Blind in Worcester he went on to Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated with first-class honors in modern history.

Puleston Jones was always interested in Welsh culture and history, and helped to found the Dafydd ab Gwilym Society at Oxford in 1886. In 1888 he was ordained as a pastor. He served in various churches, published his sermons and theological essays, and wrote articles for a Welsh pacifist periodical (Y Deyrnas) during World War I. He is best remembered today for devising adaptations of Braille to fit the Welsh language--adaptations that apparently remain in use today.

Today, a plaque marks the house where the Rev. Dr. Puleston Jones was raised, in Bala.

And speaking of Braille...

Today is Louis Braille's bicentennial--the inventor was born on this date in 1809. (We wrote him up on 4 January 2007--probably should have waited!)

Rose Parade float, Helen Keller, and Braille

So last month, I mentioned a family outing to the Getty. This month, we were "tourists in our own city" by going to the display of Rose Parade floats in Pasadena. For two days after the parade, the floats are parked along two streets and in a parking lot, along with food vendors and "white suits," the Rose Parade volunteers who explain how each float is made. (It's a little like if each painting in a museum had its own docent.)

The route was quite wheelable (we saw quite a number of other visitors using mobility equipment), and there were accessible buses from the park-and-ride sites. And the second float we saw was.... the Lions Club International float, titled "the Miracle Worker," with a giant black-and-white image of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan (made of rice, poppy seeds, and onion seeds, we were told); behind it, a giant pair of glasses, a white cane, and a stack of books titled "Braille," "Helen Keller," "The Miracle Worker" etc. The "white suit" at that float showed us a braille version of the Parade program, and invited the kids to feel the braille pages.

Further along, another "white suit" invited us to go inside the barriers to touch a float and examine it at even closer range. Apparently this is an accommodation offered to disabled visitors--so my son was soon holding a starfish made of lima beans and whiffing irises.

[Photos depict the Lions Club float as described in the text of this post.]

April 2: Thomas Rhodes Armitage (1824-1890)

The very defect of sight, which proved an insuperable obstacle in the career which I had chalked out for myself, has peculiarly fitted me for a new and more extended sphere of usefulness.

--Thomas Rhodes Armitage

Today marks the birthday of British doctor Thomas Rhodes Armitage, born on this date in 1824. He is best remembered as founder of the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). Armitage trained as a doctor, and worked in medicine for years, including a stint in Turkey during the Crimean War. He married in 1860 and had two sons and a daughter.

Armitage (shown above left, in a sepia-toned portrait found here) left his medical practice in 1866, when he could no longer see well enough to read printed text. From then, he became interested in the various possible systems of raised type. As founder of the "British and Foreign Society for Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind," he was among those who popularized Louis Braille's six-dot system as the standard for producing literature for blind readers. Armitage was also concerned with employment for young blind men, and promoted vocational training in such fields as piano tuning to improve their chances of finding work. He raised funds to open the Royal Normal College for the Blind in 1872. His books included The Education and Employment of the Blind (1871, 1886) and The Condition of the Blind in Great Britain and Ireland (1878).

January 4: Louis Braille (1809-1852)

Today marks the birthday of Louis Braille (left; his bicentennial is just two years from now), developer of the eponymous braille system. If you know what an "awl" is, and you don't work leather or crossword puzzles, it might be because (like me) you read a biography of Braille in your childhood. It's hard to forget the story: three-year-old Louis became blind after he was struck by a stitching awl in his father's saddle-and-harness shop. He attended Paris's Royal Institute for Blind Youth from the age of 10, where he became a talented musician.

The six-dot braille system was based in part on a twelve-dot "night writing," an invention intended for military use that never quite caught on. Braille's code can be used as notation for any written language, and has also been applied to music and mathematics. Braille himself published a method of writing music with the raised-dot system, and helped invent a mechanical device for producing braille text.

Louis Braille didn't live to know his system would be widely embraced; he died in 1852, at the age of 43, from tuberculosis; his remains were buried in the Panthéon in 1952. Wonder what he would have made of braille jewelry. And one more tidbit: There is an asteroid named for Braille.