[PW] Braille and felt letters

[Dennis Lien]

Bill Graczyk sent me a note offlist correcting what were almost certainly
my confused memories of history of resistance to the advent of Braille, which
I'd noted as a sidelight of the recent "resistance to the advent of printing"
thread.  With Bill's permission, I'm forwarding his note to the list:

Dennis Lien

**************************

In a recent post to Project-Wombat you referred to the makers of
felt-letter books for the blind as threatened by the advent of Braille
books. Before Braille, blind people read books with embossed letters and
symbols and there were so few of these available that I doubt that there
was any industry to be threatened by Braille books, though the teachers
who were used to teaching from embossed texts did indeed resist using
Braille, not least because it allowed children to communicate among
themselves.

I wonder if you weren't thinking of Louis Braille himself,
who  before he created raised-dot printing (at age 14), experimented with
raised letters cut out of leather-natural enough for the son of a
leather-worker. See "Origins of Braille," by Pamela Lorimer, pp. 18-39,
(with a good bibliography) in "Braille Into the Next Millennium,"
Washington, D.C., 2000.

Bill Graczyk
Wisconsin Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

William Graczyk
Wisconsin Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis Lien [mailto:Dennis.K.Lien-1 at tc.umn.edu]
Sent: Thursday, May 29, 2008 9:19 AM
To: Graczyk, William
Subject: Re: Braille and felt letters

Probably my error... as I said, I was just relating an anecdote
(dramatized on a radio show, I think) that I had heard many many
years ago (forty or more, at least) and it's entirely possible I
had misremembered the correct details.

I see you sent this directly to me -- is it O.K. with you if I copy your
note and this reply to the list so they'll get into the Archives and
hypothetical future searchers thereof will not be led astray by the
vagueries of my recollections?

Thanks much for the feedback,

Dennis Lien