EDUCATION
308
EDUCATION
on which are engraved or embossed the letters of the theory, Haily took this young waif to be the subject of
alphabet arranged in serial order at equal distances his first practical essays in teaching the bUnd. Lesueur
from each otlier, as in the diagram here given. was promised a regular daily allowance in place of the
(X&cde^a-^CCrrvnofto^-i tuvx
A
Lana-Terzi Contrivance for CoRRESPONDrN'G bt Knots
Suppose now that a person who is not blind should
wish to send to his blind friend this message: 11 nemico
ti trama insidie (the enemy is trying to ensnare you).
Let him take a piece of thread or twine, apply the end
of it to the extreme point of the tablet, extend the
thread over the space from a to the first letter i of the
message and make a knot at that point; for the second
letter, apply this first knot to point a, extend the
tlireatl over the space from a to the letter I, make,
as before, a knot at that point, and so on for the
rest of the letters. It will readily be understood how
the blind person, to whom the roll of knotted thread
or twine is sent, can make out the communication by
applying the various thread lengths over the distances
indicated by the knots, and thus discover each letter
of the message. The bUnd correspondent , in his turn,
can easily send by this same method whatever com-
munication he wishes.
A few years after the publication of Lana-Terzi's "Prodromo", Jacques Bernouilli, being at Geneva in 1676, taught Elizabeth Waldkirch to read by a method not unlike that of Cardano. The young lady made such progress that after four years she was able to cor- respond with her friends in German, French, and Latin, all of which she spoke fluently at the age of fifteen. She knew almost all the Bible by heart, was familiar with philosophy, and was an accomplished musician.
About the year 1711 the first known attempt was made to construct a tactile ciphering-tablet or appara- tus by which all the operations of arithmetic might be performed and recorded. This was the work of Nich- olas Saunderson, who became blind when one year old. So distinguished was this blind mathematician that he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the LIniversity of Cambridge. The Abb6 Claude- Francois Deschamps (1745-91), in his treatise on the education of the deaf and dumb, is said to have also sketched the outlines of the art of teaching the blind to read and write. Diderot in his "Lettre sur les aveugles", which appeared in London in 1749, and for which he was condemned to prison, mentions his in- terview with Lenotre, better known as "The Blind Man of Puisaux". Ajnong other remarkable things related of him is the teaching of his son, though not blind, to read by means of raised letters. Between 1772 and 17S4 we read of the earliest attempt to make maps in relief for the blind. This invention is ascribed to R. Weissenburg, of Mannheim, who was partially blind at five years of age, and totally at fifteen. Whether any of the credit is due to Weissenburg's teacher, Cliristian Niesen, cannot be ascertained. Though Diderot was among the first to call special attention to the condition and wants of the blind, and to make them generally known through his famous letter, yet neither he, nor Leibniz, nor Reid, nor Con- dillac, nor any of the Encyclopedists went beyond abstract psycliological speculation. None of them proposed any measure of practical utility or relief nor devised any plans for the instruction and traming of sightless persons.
The modern era in the history of education of the blind opened in 1784 — nearly three centuries after the desultory and apparently ineffectual attempts of Car- dano and others — when Valentin Haiiy (1745-1S22) set himself to do for the blind what the .\bb^ del'Ep(5ehad done for deaf mutes. It was in June, 1784, that Haiiy met, in one of the churches of Paris, a young mendicant named Lesueur, who had been blind from his birth. Having already spent many years in studying the
income which he was supposed to earn by begging.
Before long the number of Haiiy's pupils increased to
twelve, then to double that number, and finally to
fifty. His school was at first a day-school, to which
children of both sexes were admitted. When Haiiy,
in 1786, exhibited the attainments of twenty-four of
his best pupils at Versailles, Louis XVI and his court
were in raptiu-es at the wonderful novelty of children
without sight reading, writing, ciphering, doing handi-
craft work, and playing orchestral music. So great
was the interest which this and similar exhibitions
aroused, and so generous the patronage of the king and
the public which they secured for his school, that
Haiiy soon had sufficient means to board his pupils.
From the very beginning the institution had the
triple character of a school, a workshop, and an acad-
emy of music; and to this day these three depart-
ments have been maintained with such a record for
efficiency that the institutioii founded by Haiiy has
served as the model for most of the many others in both
hemispheres. But true intellectual culture for the blind
dates only from the day when reading by touch was
made possible. To Haiiy is due the credit of having
provided a sy.=tem of tactual printing and a perma-
nent literature for the blind. In the light of a cen-
tiiry's progress and of better systems of printing and
writing invented since his day, the shortcomings of
Haiiy's print in relief may lessen the value of his in-
vention, but, in fairness to his memory, it must be
remembered that Haiiy alone succeeded in making
practical for the blind as a class what others before
him had merely foreshadowed, or had successfully
apphed only in individual instances. In spite, there-
fore, of the derogatory claims made by two or three
writers, and notwithstanding that he himself ad-
mitted having seen a letter printed by Theresa von
Paradis from t^TJe made for her by von Kempelen, the
fact remains that no one before Haiiy had ever tried
seriously to make printing available for the blind; to
no one before him had the idea occurred of printing
books for the blind, or of establishing libraries of liter-
ature printed in relief. The movement originated by
him has resulted in the establishment in all civilized
coiintries of institutions of learning and industrial
training schools for the blind. Before the close of the
eighteenth century, a period of only sixteen years, four
such institutions had sprimg up in Great Britain, viz., in
Liverpool ( 1 79 1) , in Edinburgh ( 1 793) , in Bristol ( 1 793) ,
and in London (1799). Other countries were not slow
in following the example. The following table shows
what the leading countries of Europe and .America have
done for their blind during the nineteenth century: —
No. of
First Inst.
No. of
Blind
No. of
founded in
Educat.
Schools
the year
Inst.
and
Asylums
France
1784
32,340
24
10
England
1791
26.330
24
54
Scotland
1793
4.000
5
2
.\ust ria-Hungary
1804
41,400
11
17
Germany
1806
49,570
34
48
1807
221,208
37
6
Sweden
1S08
4,100
3
5
Switzerland
1S09
2.500
4
5
Ireland
ISIO
5.120
6
7
Denmark
1811
1,961
2
2
Spain
United States
1820
21,000
11
5
1831
64,763
44
24
Belgium
1S36
4.935
8
4
Italy
1S3S
30.210
19
5
Norway
1S61
2,816
2
1
