The first attempt made to print books for the blind was made by the Abbe Hauy, at Paris, in 1785. The letters were so large, however, the paper so thick, and the books so bulky and expensive, that they were of little practical use. No improvement had been made upon this system, so late as 1830, when the Paris press was still lumbering on in the old method. A few years later a French author, a teacher of the Paris school for the blind, writes, “The Americans have effected a revolution in the art of printing for the blind.”
It was Mr. S. P. Ruggles, the well-known inventor, who, by his genius and untiring industry, wrought this great change. He first turned his attention to the education of the blind in 1835 at the Perkins Institute, in Boston. For years he closely studied their wants and capabilities by constant daily observation of the pupils. Books were the first thing required; the few made being so cumbersome and costly as scarcely to be available.
In the emergency which calls for a hero, one is provided; and it is worthy of record that this man, to supply the famishing intellect of the blind, clambered up step by step the rugged height which Gutenberg had scaled, to give light to the seeing world.
After many experiments, he became convinced that he could produce a type of less size, and less height of face, which the blind could read with the greatest facility; providing the raised impression was hard and sharp, and the angles of the type adapted to the touch of the fingers. He finally succeeded in reducing the size of the type and the height of its face so as to place books, of comparatively small dimensions, in the hands of blind students and pupils. The size of the type now in use, the height, and peculiar bevel of its face, are his invention.
He next devised and built the first press ever made for printing for the blind. This was a very powerful machine, giving an impression of about three hundred tons to each sheet impressed, yet so contrived that the blind could do their own printing.
After succeeding in the making of the new kind of type, and in the construction of the ponderous press for printing, he was met by an unexpected difficulty. There was no paper in the market adapted to this kind of printing or embossing. That which was hard enough would crack and break through when printed; and that which was flexible enough not to crack, would flatten down when pressed upon by the fingers of the pupils when reading. His reduced type required a new kind of paper. The peculiar and definite bevel, and height of face of the type, and the texture of the paper printed on, were most intimately connected, and it took a long series of trials, in the manufacture of paper, to get them so harmonized as to work well together. But at last, after many experiments with gums and gelatine, he produced the article required.