The blind are those who want, or are deficient in, the sense of sight. Blindness may vary in degree from the slightest impairment of vision to total loss of sight; it may also be temporary or permanent. It is caused by defect, disease, or injury to the eye, to the optic nerve, or to that part of the brain connected with it. Old age is sometimes accompanied with blindness, occasioned by the drying up of the humours of the eye, or by the opacity of the cornea, the crystalline lens, etc. The blind are often distinguished for a remarkable mental activity, and a wonderful development of the intellectual powers. Their touch and hearing, particularly, become very acute.
As early as 1260 an asylum for the blind (L'hospice des Quinze-Vingts) was founded in Paris by St Louis for the relief of the Crusaders who lost their sight in Egypt and Syria; but the first institution for the instruction of the blind was the idea of Valentin Hauy, brother of the celebrated mineralogist. In 1784 he opened an institution in which the blind were instructed not only in appropriate mechanical employments, as spinning, knitting, making ropes or fringes, and working in paste-board, but also in music, in reading, writing, ciphering, geography, and the sciences. For instruction in reading he procured raised letters of metal; for writing he used particular writing-cases, in which a frame, with wires to separate the lines, could be fastened upon the paper; for ciphering there were movable figures of metal, and ciphering-boards in which the figures could be fixed; for teaching geographymaps were prepared upon which mountains, rivers, cities, and the boundaries of countries were indicated to the sense of touch in various ways, etc.
Similar institutions were soon afterwards founded in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Copenhagen, Dresden, Edinburgh, Liverpool, London, Vienna, and in many towns of the United States. By 1900 there were comparatively few large cities that did not possess a school or institution of some kind for the blind.
At the start of the 20th century the attitude towards the blind was rather patronising, and one source may be quoted as saying 'the occupations in which the blind are found capable of engaging are such as the making of baskets and other kinds of wicker-work, brushmaking, rope and twine making, the making of mats and matting, knitting, netting, fancy work of various kinds, cutting fire-wood, the sewing of sacks and bags; the carving of articles in wood, etc'. However, it was also recognised that more skilled tasks could also be performed by blind persons, and the same source notes that 'Piano-tuning is also successfully carried on by some, and the cleaning of clocks and watches has even been occasionally practised by them'.
Around 1900 an impetus was given, in Britain, to the higher education of the blind by the formation of the British and Foreign Blind Association, the establishment of a college for the Blind Sons of Gentlemen at Worcester, and the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind, Upper Norwood.
Various systems were devised for the purpose of teaching the blind to read, some of which consisted in the use of the ordinary Roman alphabet, with more or less modification, and some of which employ types quite arbitrary in form. In all systems the characters rise above the surface of the paper so as to be felt by the fingers. The type adopted by Hauy was the script or italic form of the Roman letter. This was introduced into England by Sir C. Lowther, who printed the Gospel of St. Matthew in 1832 with type obtained from Paris. Before this Gall of Edinburgh made use of an embossed alphabet based on the ordinary Roman small letters, in which all curves were replaced by angular lines, and in 1834 he published the Gospel of St John in this character. Subsequently he introduced various improvements, and in particular the letters were produced with serrated surfaces, thus giving greater distinctness. Alston of Glasgow, Howe of Boston, and others also used the Roman form; but the former (who was the first to print the whole Bible, in 1840) adopted the Roman capitals, while the latter adopted the small letters, printing in this type the Bible and many other books. Of alphabets deviating entirely or nearly so from the Roman letter, one consists of a stenographic shorthand invented by Lucas of Bristol; another was a phonetic shorthand devised by Frere of London. In Dr. Moon's alphabet some of the characters are Roman, others are based on or suggested by the Roman characters. The Braille system, widely adopted by the laye 20th century, is one in which the letters are formed by a combination of dots. Dr. Moon's system from its simplicity and the size of its characters is in very general use in books for the blind. There are also systems by which the blind are enabled to write, and the writing may be either in relief so as to be read by the blind, or in characters that may be read by those who see. Research Blind
A globe is a sphere, a round solid body, which may be conceived to be generated by the revolution of a semicircle about its diameter. An artificial globe, in geography and astronomy, is a globe of metal, plaster, paper, pasteboard, plastic etc, on the surface of which is drawn a map, or representation of either the earth or the heavens, with the several circles which are conceived upon them, the former being called the terrestrial globe, and the latter the celestial globe. In the terrestrial globe the wire on which it turns represents the earth's axis, the extremities of it representing the poles. The brazenmeridian is a vertical circle in which the
artificial globe turns, divided into 360 degrees, each degree being divided into minutes and seconds. The brassmeridian receives the ends of the axis on which the globe revolves. At right angles to this, and consequently horizontal, is a broad ring of wood or brass representing the horizon; that is, the true horizon of the earth which lies in a plane containing the earth's centre. The horizon and brassmeridian are connected with the stand on which the whole is supported. On the surface of the globe, as on other maps, are marked parallels of latitude, meridians, etc. On a globe of some size the meridians are drawn through every 15" of the equator, each answering to an hour's difference of time between two places. Hence they are called the hour circles. A number of problems or questions, many of them more curious than useful, may be solved by means of a terrestrial globe. Among the most important are such as to find the latitude and longitude of a place, the difference of time between two places, the time of the sun's rising and setting for a given day at a given place, etc.
The Ordnance Survey is a British company producing maps of the British isles. The original work was carried out by the Royal Engineers under the direction of the Board of Ordnance and the survey was begun in 1747 for military purposes. The first map of Great Britain was ordered in 1797 and was published on a scale of 1 inch to the mile. In 1855 with the abolition of the Board of Ordnance the responsibility passed to the War Office and in 1870 was transferred to the Board of Works before in 1890 passing to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries where the work was still none-the-less carried on by officers and men of the corps of Royal Engineers, before becoming a separate commercial organisation in the later 20th century.
The survey of Ireland, on a scale of 6 inches to the mile was ordered in 1824. In 1840 the survey of Scotland and of the six northern counties of England was begun on the same scale. In 1855 the surveys were ordered to be on the following scales: 1 inch to the mile or 6 inches to the mile for the whole U.K., with other scales for cultivated districts and towns of over 4,000 inhabitants. There were also surveys of the U.K. produced on scales of 2, 4, and 10 miles to the inch.
The department also had the duty of preparing maps for all military purposes, and of copying those
prepared by the intelligence division of the War Office. During the Great War it issued 32,872,000 maps, plans, and diagrams to the Army and Navy. Research Ordnance Survey
Signal was a German propaganda magazine produced during the Second World War for the civilian residents of occupied countries. Signal was produced in various languages, depending upon the target audience, and pioneered the use of colour photography in magazines. Signal combined exaggerated stories of German military successes, accompanied by maps, graphics and photographs, with advertisements and pictures of attractive young women in bathing suits - a 1940's equivalent of soft pornography, and an original marketing idea at the time.
Tithe maps, were produced in Britain for the majority of places as a result of an Act passed in 1836 to convert into money rents the payments formerly made by landholders in kind to the Church authorities. A large scale plan showed each individual titheable plot (omitting those which were exempted), numbered to correspond with entries in an Apportionment or register which stated the owner and occupier of the land, the area and the current land use. Copies of Enclosure and Tithe Awards were deposited in each parish, usually in the parishchest kept in church or vicarage, with duplicates in the office of an official known as the Clerk of the Peace. Research Tithe Maps
Aaron Arrowsmith was an English geographer and map maker. He was born in 1750 and died in 1823. He published major world maps in 1790 and 1794; maps of North America in 1796, the PacificOcean in 1798 and published an Atlas of South India in 1822. Research Aaron Arrowsmith
Anaximander was an ancient Greek philosopher. He was born in 611 BC at Miletus and died 547. The fundamental principle of his philosophy is that the source of all things is an undefined substance infinite in quantity. The firmament is composed of heat and cold, the stars of air and fire. The sun occupies the highest place in the heavens, has a circumference twenty-eight times larger than the earth, and resembles a cylinder, from which streams of fire issue. The moon is likewise a cylinder, nineteen times larger than the earth. The earth has the shape of a cylinder, and is placed in the midst of the universe, where it remains suspended. Anaximander occupied himself a great deal with mathematics and geography. To him is credited the invention of geographical maps and the first application of the gnomon or style fixed on a horizontal plane to determine the solstices and equinoxes. Research Anaximander
Guillaume Delisle was a French geographer. He was born in 1675 and died in 1726. He published upwards of 130 maps, and reconstructed the system of geography current in Europe in the beginning of the 18th century. Louis XV appointed him Geographer to the King. Research Guillaume Delisle
James Rennell was an English geographer. He was born in 1742 and died in 1830. Joining the East India Company, he was appointed surveyor-general of Bengal in 1764 and retired in 1777. He produced maps of India and Bengal and wrote various works on geography. Research James Rennell
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
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