Evening Star Newspaper, May 26, 1929, Page 106

THE SUNDAY STAR, W \QHI\I(“T()\' : D. (' MAY 26, l")’?w PART 7: T - — = s S ew Wonders for the Blind Braille Headguarters in Paris Turns Out S, /)ec‘m/ Lnventions far the S1ght- Jess— Remark- flé/c’ Machines fw 1 hose - ho iAre Gurded L hrough Life by Therr Fin- ger szs By FRANCIS DICKIE. ican Braiile Press for the War and Civilian : Blind, a vast old mansion that for half a_ lN Paris, at the heagquarters of the Amer- century was the ancestral home of th: Duc @le Clermont Tonnerre, there has been brought o ¢Binpletion within the last two months thres pew inventions, new wé'nders to aid the blind, that are both simple, inexpénsive and at the game time highly effective. In addition, im- provements have been made upon a tyvpewriter gor the blind and a Tethod of printing the peading matter for them that are of great im- portance. The first story and pictures of these @ids are here set forth for the first tims! * To the gencral reader pr_'obi.bly" the most in-’ $erasting of these new inventions will be tre ¢ross-word puszie for the sightless, because gross-word puzzles have proved so fascinating to so many people who have the good fortune ©of normsl visicn. Naturally, a method of cross- word puzzles for people who read only with their fingertips presented great difficulties. Xet, strangeiy enough, the man whe conquered the problem was blind. His name is Morris Anceaux, a young Prenchman of 30 years of mge, residing near Paris. Anceaux is a pro- _Wesscr of music, and from reading music with his fingertips came the initial idea which ptarted him upon the work of making cross- Yord puzzles for his fellow sufferers. His first invention consisted of a frame of ll squares of brass rimmed with woed. The was perforated and took the place of the ordinary cdiagram used by & person who can @ee. Little round-headed nails served to form the letters, for these could be easily felt by the sensitive fingers of the blind. The cross- bordproblemtobesoavedmresdwtlome Nlnd person by some one who could see from ,Bhe ordinary newspapers and magazines at first, tBut as soon as the invention was seem to be tppractical George L. Raverat, foreign secretary ‘of the-organization, had cross-word puzzles in- torporated into the eight regular magazines, Which are published in six languages. 'HE evoluticn of this new invention is par- { ticularly interesting. The first board was §n two sections, with correct answer on one fsection. This, however, it was found cost $3.20 %o manufacture. All the publications of the iAmerican Braille Press are supplied free, and though the main distributing center is Paris, the entire work is financed by centributions principally from the United States. In the ‘case of the cross-word puzzle board the society Wwished to put this cut at a very low cost. So began a series of experiments, and in two weeks the probiem of very low price production was Bolved. ‘These were going on while the writer ‘Was engaged in gashering the material for this frticle, and the evolutien is completely illus- Rrated in the accompenying photograph. The second board was put out in brass and Wood, but smaller, at a cost lowered to $2.40. “This was largely due to the fact that the brass had to be hand drilled at the workshop bf the Braille Press. All .the Braiile printing ¥s done by the use of zinc plates. .So the next &tep that was tricd was using a plate of zinc ©f a _thickness te hold the pins solidly. This dowe] the cost to $1.60 per board. Then the ‘workman in charge of the machine shop had a . rigiit idea. He took an ordinary thin sheet of kinc, th: same as that used on which the \Braille printing machines mark the dots which fare later wransierred to paper. By lengthening %he peints on one printing machine so they berrx,rn?d the zinc, instead of merely raising ht, a3 n ordinary printing, he made it possible make the holes in the cross-word puazle irapills, thus ceoing away with the expensive and wrilling, 1he thin sheo 9( zine thus turned into a uu..:. -word puzzie could be put out at 50 cents, ‘one-seventh of the cost of the first invention a:id extremoly light. Furthermore, by leaving lli.-:ding books for the blind in Paris. a strip of zinc arcund the puzzle and turning this down after the perioraticns were made this strip formed a rim, so that the board was raised up and th: mectal nails have a clear space underneath. The boards finally produced have 15 spaces each way, the standard number, instead of 11, as on th* first invented board. " Within a week after the low-cost board was evolved the Paris plant received an order for a thousand from England. And so now, through the patient labor of a blind musician in Prance, blind pecople throughout the world may enjoy this most fascinating of pastimes. Equally interesting, and really of far greater importance from an educational viewpoint, is the invention completed aimost simultaneously with that of the cress-word puzzle board by which algebra, simpie mathematics and higher mathematics, even logarithms, ean be worked ocut by & blind person, using the ordinary char- acters and not the Braille characters. The tremendous imporiance of this reguires some explanation. Educators working with blind children have discovered that a blind child of normal intelligence, studying with chil- dren possessed of sighi, makes much greater progress than - when studying alone. In the past, however, the chief difficulty was that the blind child worked with Braille print, which the teacher could not understand, and there- fore could not d:monstrate to the blind child some probiem she was explaining to the other children by ordinary writing on thz blackboard. Now, with the perfection of this new invention to tcach algebra and other forms of mathe- matics, the blind child can sit in a class of chil- dren who have their sight and by using the same letters and symbols as the other chil- ‘dren on a special frame can receive the same teaching. Y a curious coincidence the inventor of this new method, like the inventor of the cross- word puzzle, was also a blind man and a mu- sician. His name is Viedzimierza Colanskiego, o native of Lemberg, Poland. Until a few years ago he was a piano player and a painter. Due tion. It is simple, effective and not very costly. ‘The letters and figures ars made of lead about h and fit upon & wooden frame with a series of grooved lines. Th2 grooved frame The latest model typewriter for the blind. The carriage is operated on & pendulum principle. YR A o s N A s i The volumes are published in six languages and sent to 50 cowuntries. benefit to mankind, the demands for this will probably far cutsirip that of the cross-word puzzle invention, but it will-be over a period of greater time. Typewriters for the blind have been in use during the past 10 years. The most efficient were produced in the United States and Eng- land. But the nzw machine just put into use in Paris for th: first time has sufficient im- provements to almost deserve the name of a new invention. Previous typewriters for the blind used a roller’and prinied upon one side of the paper cnly. In printing such writing as typtvm.cr For, instead of & roller, a frame is used. This frame consists of two metal bars at right angles to the keys. The keys pass along the frame. When the page is filled, the frame is turned over. The frame is so while writing is don: upon one sufficlent space for the wide Braille the other side, thus effecting a great sav space. Another improvement is that the power to move the frame is supplied by a iron penduium. The pendulum, held strong cord, never goes out of order, w! found to be an improvement on the former machines for the blind, which were quite so effective as the spring in an ordinary typewriter, duz to the difference in construc- tion of the two machines. The perfection of radio has created a revo- lution in the life of man. Far-distant outposts of the world, lonely farm homes, the bedrooms of invalids have been brought in touch with the world’s greatest artists. Those who are blind. have been perhaps the chief beneficiaries through radio; and within the last four years the American Braille Press at Paris has kept up with the progress of events, until by 1928 they were publishing radio sections in their news- papers in six languages and during the Spring of 1928 began issuing radio programs for Italy, France and Belgium. A still further advance came when the orgarization of the Paris head- quarters, in co-cperation with French radio cor- porations, solved the problem of supplying in- formation and material with which blind per- sons could build their own radio sets. The radio companics suppiied the framework, the dials of which had raised letters. Naturally, the instructicns hal o be more than just printed directions, even in Braille. Se, after much experimsniing, a whole complete diagram was evolved on pepcr which could be followed by the blind porson desiving: to make his own radio set. l‘HIs with th: sdditicnal ordinary written instructions, was sufficient, and at the tim= of writing the n>w invention had been found satisfactory by sovoral blind pecple interested in radio. The fram> whon given to the blini is, of course, bare of wiring. In the last four years 19,000,000 ges of, Braille have been published at the Par ‘: , quarters, this due to rapid mechanica] !npmve- ments completed at the p‘ant The latest in- vention to b2 ins’a’led is a “roto Braille press.” - In the old-fashioned press the zinc plates upon which were pun-had th~ dots forming the spe- cial words read by the blind were placed n & press in a flat, upright position. The pilate then stamped ths dots upon specially heavy paper, ene sh~2t * ~ tim~. The old machine