Who's Who in the Far East/MURRAY, Rev. William Hill
MURRAY, Rev. William Hill (PEKING), Inventor of the numeral type by means of which blind and illiterate sighted Chinese can learn to read and write well in three months, using only 30 symbol s, whereas the average Chinaman takes six years to master the 4000 ideographs essential to simple reading, and only 5 per cent, ever learn; b. June 3, 1843, s. of a blacksmith. Early lost his left arm by an accident; rural postman; in 1863 became a colporteur for National Bible Society of Scotland, by whom (1871) he was sent to North China; in 1879, adapted Braille's symbols for the blind to represent numbers, and numbered the 408 sounds in use at Peking (which are the standard for all Mandarin dialects); seeing the facility with which the blind acquired the power of reading and writing, illiterate Christians craved his help, and by substituting black lines for the raised white dots, he produced the simplest possible set of geometric forms; these are the printing-type with which the blind now print books for sighted persons; in the Boxer trouble his blind women were all martyred, and most the men and boys; he himself suffered so severely that he became totally blind in one eye and half blind in the other; but with his wife and children, he has reorganised his schools and printing works. Address: School for the Blind, Peking, China.