1.
Amsterdam (city), New York
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Amsterdam is a city in Montgomery County, New York, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 18,620, the name is derived from the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The city of Amsterdam is surrounded on the north, east, the city developed on both sides of the Mohawk River, with the majority located on the north bank. The Port Jackson area on the side is also part of the city. The city is within the original, now town of Caughnawaga. The first Europeans to settle here were Dutch immigrants about 1710 and they called the community Veeders Mills and Veedersburgh after Albert Veeder, an early mill owner. After the American Revolutionary War, many came from New England. Anglo-American residents changed the name to Amsterdam in 1803, in 1773, Guy Johnson built Guy Park, a stone Georgian mansion. A Loyalist, he fled to Canada during the Revolution, the mansion has been preserved and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was incorporated as a village on April 20,1830 from a section of the Town of Amsterdam, New charters in 1854,1865, and 1875 increased the size of the village. In 1885, Amsterdam became a city, which increased in size by annexation of the former village of Port Jackson on the south side of the Mohawk River. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 was a boom to the city. It was known for its carpets, in 1865, the population of Amsterdam was 5,135. Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a destination for immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Amsterdam experienced serious flooding damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene in late August 2011. This flooding threatened properties at the edge due to erosion. Chalmers Knitting Mills was added in 2010, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 6.3 square miles, of which,5.9 square miles of it is land and 0.3 square miles of it is water. The total area is 5. 41% water, the city developed on both sides of the Mohawk River and Erie Canal. The Chuctanunda River flows into the Mohawk from the north at Amsterdam, New York State Route 30, a north-south highway called Market Street in part, crosses the Mohawk River to link the main part of Amsterdam to the New York State Thruway
2.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
3.
New York Institute for the Blind
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It was located at 34th Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City. Early in the 20th century, the school was renamed the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind to emphasize its educational character, the institutes multiple facilities now serve children ranging in age from newborn to age 21. Samuel Wood was a wealthy publisher who had been a teacher until he was 40. Recognizing that reading books for children were few, he prepared and published a primer, The Young Childs A B C, or First Book. Wood had seen eager-to-learn blind children in the poorhouses, where their future was bleak. Wood was in his sixties and of a philanthropic bent, samuel Akerly had been for ten years the superintendent and attending physician of the New York Institution for the Deaf. He had been active in developing instruction for deaf-mutes and became interested in doing the same for the blind, the legislation passed, but was amended by one state senator to limit the institutions purpose to children. John Dennison Russ, a philanthropist and physician, had proposed on his own to instruct children in the poorhouse before Akerly made him aware of the newly approved institution. Russ served without salary as the first teacher of the first class — three blind orphan boys brought from the poorhouse to a home on Canal Street. After two months, three boys were added and the school moved to Mercer Street. Teaching was by experiment, with successful methods discovered as time progressed, a demonstration of the students progress was given at the end of the year, generating public interest and stimulating contributions and new benefactors. By 1833, ten students, four of them girls, had joined the original six. In 1834, New York State began paying for some students, by now there were 26 students in all, and Russ was assisted by one teacher of literary subjects, a foreman of mechanical pursuits, and a teacher of music. According to the history, Dr. Russ achieved results most remarkable. Russ resigned from the school in 1835, fanny Crosby, a poet who wrote the lyrics for thousands of Christian hymns, was both a student and a teacher at the institute. Blind since infancy, she entered the institute in 1835, at age 14 and she was a student for 9 years, then a teacher from September 1847 to March 1858. Grover Cleveland and his brother William came to be employed at the school in 1853 and 1854, at that time there were about 116 pupils, ranging in age from 8 to 25, half male and half female. To finance his studies for the ministry, William was teaching the older students history, philosophy, logic
4.
New York Point
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New York Point is a braille-like system of tactile writing for the blind invented by William Bell Wait, a teacher in the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. The system used one to four pairs of points set side by side, the most common letters are written with the fewest points, a strategy also employed by the competing American Braille. Capital letters were cumbersome in New York Point, each being four dots wide, likewise, the four-dot-wide hyphen and apostrophe were generally omitted. When capitals, hyphens, or apostrophes were used, they sometimes caused legibility problems, according to Helen Keller, this caused literacy problems among blind children, and was one of the chief arguments against New York Point and in favor of one of the braille alphabets. New York Point competed with the American Braille alphabet, which consisted of fixed cells two points wide and three high. Wait advocated the New York System as more logical than either the American Braille or the English Braille alphabets, and the three scripts competed in what was known as the War of the Dots. Wait also invented the Kleidograph, a typewriter with twelve keys for embossing New York Point on paper, New York Point is not supported by Unicode, as of version 6.3. In the charts below, the first row of NYP are graphic images, older browsers may not support the latter. Like braille, there are contractions, single letters in NYP that correspond to sequences of letter in print, like in braille, there is a number sign that converts letters to digits. The dash, hyphen, and apostrophe are four dots wide, notes are made by combining two primitives, which are the digits 1–7, ⟨⟩ is thus a whole C note, ⟨⟩ a quarter D note, etc. In chords, the length is given for the first note mentioned. These may be prefixed by ⟨⟩ ♯, ⟨⟩ ♭, or ⟨⟩ ♮ and these may be doubled, as in print. The note is preceded by its octave, which is written as the number plus an upper dot, ⟨⟩ 5th 8va, ⟨⟩ 2nd 8va, rests are two lower dots plus the length, ⟨⟩ a whole rest, ⟨⟩ a half rest, etc. Chords are written as intervals, which is the number plus a lower dot, ⟨⟩ is a third, the sign ⟨⟩ signals a change in octave. Thus a chord of three notes spanning the 4th to 5th octaves is 4th-8va C-whole 5th-invl with 5th-8va E See Waits publications for additional conventions, blindness education Korean Braille#History – A script like New York Point was used for Korean before 6-dot braille was introduced. Kleidograph,1894 - The Martin Howard Collection, a Look Back, published in JVIB, March 2006, documents the War of the Dots
5.
Braille
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Braille /ˈbreɪl/ is a tactile writing system used by people who are blind or visually impaired. It is traditionally written with embossed paper, braille-users can read computer screens and other electronic supports thanks to refreshable braille displays. They can write braille with the slate and stylus or type it on a braille writer, such as a portable braille note-taker. Braille is named after its creator, Frenchman Louis Braille, who lost his eyesight due to a childhood accident, in 1824, at the age of 15, Braille developed his code for the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system, which included musical notation, in 1829. The second revision, published in 1837, was the first binary form of writing developed in the modern era, Braille characters are small rectangular blocks called cells that contain tiny palpable bumps called raised dots. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguish one character from another, since the various braille alphabets originated as transcription codes of printed writing systems, the mappings vary from language to language. Braille cells are not the thing to appear in braille text. There may be embossed illustrations and graphs, with the lines either solid or made of series of dots, arrows, bullets that are larger than braille dots, a full Braille cell includes six raised dots arranged in two lateral rows each having three dots. The dot positions are identified by numbers from one through six,64 solutions are possible from using one or more dots. A single cell can be used to represent a letter, number, punctuation mark. In the face of screen-reader software, braille usage has declined, in Barbiers system, sets of 12 embossed dots encoded 36 different sounds. It proved to be too difficult for soldiers to recognize by touch, in 1821 Barbier visited the Royal Institute for the Blind in Paris, where he met Louis Braille. Brailles solution was to use 6-dot cells and to assign a specific pattern to each letter of the alphabet. At first, braille was a transliteration of French orthography, but soon various abbreviations, contractions. The expanded English system, called Grade-2 Braille, was complete by 1905, for blind readers, Braille is an independent writing system, rather than a code of printed orthography. Braille is derived from the Latin alphabet, albeit indirectly, in Brailles original system, the dot patterns were assigned to letters according to their position within the alphabetic order of the French alphabet, with accented letters and w sorted at the end. The first ten letters of the alphabet, a–j, use the upper four dot positions and these stand for the ten digits 1–9 and 0 in a system parallel to Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy
6.
The Albany Academy
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The Albany Academy is an independent college preparatory day school for boys in Albany, New York, USA, enrolling students from Preschool to Grade 12. It was established in 1813 by a signed by Mayor Philip Schuyler Van Rensselaer. In July 2007, the teams of The Albany Academy. Both schools retain much of their tradition and character and each continues to give diplomas under its own name. Tuition ranges from $13,000 for Preschool, up to $22,500 for grade 12, the Albany Academy is the oldest boys day school in the New York Capital Region, chartered in March 1813 to educate the sons of Albanys political elite and rapidly growing merchant class. In the Census three years prior, Albany was the tenth-largest city in the United States, and would remain so through the 1850s due to the prominence of the Erie Canal. Classes began within months after the charter was granted, offering a college preparatory track, two years later, in 1815, a purpose-built building was completed in present-day Academy Park, adjacent to the New York State Capitol. The Federal-style building, now known as the Old Academy and headquarters of the City School District of Albany, was designed by renowned Albany architect Philip Hooker. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its architectural significance, in 2005 the school ended compulsory involvement in the program in favor of a House-based leadership program commonly found in English preparatory schools. Designed by Marcus T. Reynolds in the style, the building incorporates many elements of the Old Academy building, namely the main entryway. The red-brick Academy buildings marble cornerstone was laid by the then Governor, all grades enrolled in The Albany Academy are housed under the same roof, a point of pride for the Academy Community. In 2005, The Albany Academy ended its long standing Army JROTC program and this decision came due to declining enrollment among other factors. Certain military aspects are still available to students, but are all electives, the Board of Trustees announced that The Albany Academy and Albany Academy for Girls would merge into The Albany Academies in July 2007. Other on-campus facilities include Leonard House, the Head of Schools residence, drawn predominately from a six-county area and from within a radius of 65 miles, the student body is ethnically, religiously, and economically diverse. The total 2005–06 school population is 340 boys, including 82 in the Lower School,71 in the Middle School, there is a total of six countries represented in the school. Students are encouraged to participate in all aspects of school life, they are expected to conduct themselves responsibly and treat each other. Students are responsible for upholding school rules, the Albany Academy adheres to a school-wide honor code. Student Council members, especially seniors, occupy important leadership positions at Albany Academy, the schools core values include responsibility, self-discipline, compassion, ingenuity, respect, service, integrity and perseverance
7.
Stereoscope
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A toromax is a device for viewing a stereoscopic pair of separate images, depicting left-eye and right-eye views of the same scene, as a single three-dimensional image. In current practice, the images are prepared so that the scene appears to be beyond this virtual window, through which objects are allowed to protrude. A divider or other view-limiting feature is provided to prevent each eye from being distracted by also seeing the image intended for the other eye. The earliest type of stereoscope was invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838 and it used a pair of mirrors at 45 degree angles to the users eyes, each reflecting a picture located off to the side. Wheatstones stereoscope was introduced in the year before the first practical photographic process became available and this type of stereoscope has the advantage that the two pictures can be very large if desired. Contrary to an assertion, David Brewster did not invent the stereoscope. This allowed a reduction in size, creating devices, which became known as Brewster Stereoscopes. Almost overnight a 3D industry developed and 250,000 stereoscopes were produced, stereographers were sent throughout the world to capture views for the new medium and feed the demand for 3D. Cards were printed with these views often with explanatory text when the cards were looked at through the double-lensed viewer, sometimes called a stereopticon. In 1861 Oliver Wendell Holmes created and deliberately did not patent a handheld, streamlined, the stereoscope, which dates from the 1850s, consisted of two prismatic lenses and a wooden stand to hold the stereo card. This type of stereoscope remained in production for a century and there are still making them in limited production currently. In the mid-20th century the View-Master stereoscope, with its rotating cardboard disks containing image pairs, was popular first for virtual tourism, in 2010, Hasbro started producing a stereoscope designed to hold an iPhone or iPod Touch, called the My3D. In 2014, Google released the template for a papercraft stereoscope called Google Cardboard, apps on the mobile phone substitute for stereo cards, these apps can also sense rotation and expand the stereoscopes capacity into that of a full-fledged virtual reality device. The underlying technology is otherwise unchanged from earlier stereoscopes, several fine arts photographers and graphic artists have and continue to produce original artwork to be viewed using stereoscopes. A simple stereoscope is limited in the size of the image that may be used, a more complex stereoscope uses a pair of horizontal periscope-like devices, allowing the use of larger images that can present more detailed information in a wider field of view. The stereoscope is essentially an instrument in which two photographs of the object, taken from slightly different angles, are simultaneously presented. A moving image extension of the stereoscope has a vertically mounted drum containing a wheel upon which are mounted a series of stereographic cards which form a moving picture. The cards are restrained by a gate and when sufficient force is available to bend the card it slips past the gate and into view and these coin-enabled devices were found in arcades in the late 19th and early 20th century and were operated by the viewer using a hand crank
8.
John Scott Medal
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The John Scott Legacy Medal and Premium, created in 1816, is a medal presented to men and women whose inventions improved the comfort, welfare, and happiness of human kind in a significant way. Since 1919 the Board of Directors of City Trusts of Philadelphia provide this award, in 1822 the first awards were given to thirteen people by the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture entrusted by the Corporation of the city of Philadelphia. Several hundred recipients have since been selected by the City Council of Philadelphia, most awards have been given for inventions in science and medicine. Banting, Humberto Fernandez Moran, Luis W. Alvarez, Guglielmo Marconi, William T. Bovie, John Bardeen, mullis, Alexander Fleming, Lyle Goodhue, Ralph L. Brinster, and Professor Richard E. Smalley. In 2010, the award went to Christian J. Lambertsen, in 2013, the award was given to biochemist and biophysicist P. Leslie Dutton and to two physicians working with birth defects, N. Scott Adzick and Robert L. Brent, the award webpage The Franklin Institute, The John Scott Legacy Medal The John Scott Award Recipients. Eugene Garfield at University of Pennsylvania, medals awarded by The Franklin Institute between 1822 and 2015
9.
Franklin Institute
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The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US. It is named after the American scientist and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, founded in 1824, the Franklin Institute is one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States. On February 5,1824, Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating founded the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, in the late twentieth century the Institutes research roles gave way to educating the general public through its museum. The Bartol Research Foundation of the Franklin Institute, founded in 1924 to conduct research in the sciences, is now part of the University of Delaware. The Franklin Institute Laboratories for Research and Development operated from the Second World War into the 1980s, many scientists have demonstrated groundbreaking new technology at the Franklin Institute. From September 2 to October 11,1884, it hosted the International Electrical Exhibition of 1884, the worlds first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system was later given by Philo Taylor Farnsworth on August 25,1934. The first female member, Elizabeth Skinner, was elected to membership in 1833, the Franklin Institute was integrated in 1870, when Philadelphia teacher and activist Octavius Catto was admitted as a member. The Institutes original building at 15 South 7th Street, now the home of the Atwater Kent Museum, eventually proved too small for the Institutes research, educational programs, and library. The Institute moved into its current home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, near the intersection with 20th Street, in 1934. Funds to build the new Institute and Franklin Memorial came from the Poor Richard Club, the City Board of Trust, the Benjamin Franklin Memorial, Inc. and the Franklin Institute. John T. Windrims original design was a square building surrounding the Benjamin Franklin Statue. Despite the effects of the Great Depression, the Benjamin Franklin Memorial, only two of the four wings envisioned by Windrim were built, these face the Parkway and share design elements with other cultural and civic structures around Logan Circle. On March 31,1940, press agent William Castellini issued a release stating that the world would end the next day. The story was picked up by KYW, which reported, Your worst fears that the world will end are confirmed by astronomers of Franklin Institute, scientists predict that the world will end at 3 p. m. Eastern Standard Time tomorrow. This is no April Fool joke, confirmation can be obtained from Wagner Schlesinger, director of the Fels Planetarium of this city. This caused a panic in the city which only subsided when the Franklin Institute assured people it had no such prediction. James Ronaldson Samuel V. Merrick John C, cresson William Sellers John Vaughan Merrick Coleman Sellers Robert Empie Rogers William Penn Tatham Joseph Miller Wilson Dr. Walton Clark Dr. W. Laurence LePage Dr. Athelstan F. Spilhaus Dr. Bowen C. Dees Dr. Joel N. Bloom Dr. James L. Powell Dr. Dennis M. Wint Larry Dubinski In 2006, in 2011, the Franklin Institute received a $10 million gift from Athena and Nicholas Karabots towards the Inspire Science
10.
Blindness and education
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The subject of blindness and education has included evolving approaches and public perceptions of how best to address the special needs of blind students. These institutions provided simple vocational and adaptive training, as well as grounding in academic subjects offered through alternative formats, literature, for example, was being made available to blind students by way of embossed Roman letters. In the Middle Kingdom blind harpists are depicted on tomb walls and they were not exclusively interested in the causes and cures for blindness but also the social care of the individual. It taught the blind children skills in manual crafts although there was no education as such. Other institutions set up at that time were, the School for the Indigent Blind in London, in France, the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles was established in 1784 by Valentin Haüy. Haüys impulse to help the blind began when he witnessed the blind being mocked during a street festival. In May 1784, at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he met a beggar, François Lesueur. He developed a method of raised letters, to teach Lesueur to read and he made rapid progress, and Haüy announced the success, in September 1784 in the Journal de Paris, then receiving encouragement from the French Academy of Sciences. With the help of the Philanthropic Society Haüy founded the Institute for Blind Youth, building on the philanthropic spinning workshop for the blind, the institution of Blind Children was dedicated on 26 December 1786. Its purpose was to educate students and teach them manual work, spinning, attempts to actually educate the blind were first attempted towards the end of the century. Until that time they were considered mostly ineducable and un-trainable, one of the major figures in the movement to educate the blind was Sébastien Guillié. He established the first ophthalmological clinic in France and became director of the school in Paris, louis Braille attended Haüys school in 1819 and later taught there. He soon became determined to fashion a system of reading and writing that could bridge the gap in communication between the sighted and the blind. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we are vulnerable and we must be treated as equals – and communication is the way this can be brought about. In 1821, Braille learned of a system devised by Captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. Barbiers night writing, was a code of dots and dashes impressed into thick paper and these impressions could be interpreted entirely by the fingers, letting soldiers share information on the battlefield without having light or needing to speak. The captains code turned out to be too complex to use in its original military form, Braille worked tirelessly on his ideas, and his system was largely completed by 1824, when he was just fifteen years of age. From Barbiers night writing, he innovated by simplifying its form and he made uniform columns for each letter, and he reduced the twelve raised dots to six
11.
Braille music
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Braille music is a Braille code that allows music to be notated using Braille cells so that music can be read by visually impaired musicians. The Braille music system was developed by Louis Braille. Braille music uses the same six-position Braille cell as literary braille, however braille music assigns an entirely separate meaning to each braille symbol or group of symbols, different from literary braille, and has its own syntax and abbreviations. Almost anything that can be written in standard print music notation can be written in music notation as well. However, braille music notation is a independent and well-developed notation system with its own conventions. The worlds largest collection of music is located at the National Library for the Blind, in Stockport. Braille music, although different from print music, is in general neither easier nor more difficult to learn, visually impaired musicians gain the same benefits upon learning to read braille music as do sighted musicians who learn to read print music. Visually impaired musicians can begin learning to read braille music about the time they have reasonable competence reading Braille, Braille music for beginners, like print music for beginners, is quite simple. Some common print method books are available in braille, so that the sighted teacher can use a print version. Much commonly used music has been transcribed into braille, in the U. S. this is available from the National Library Service of the Library of Congress and through other sources. Most countries have a library similar to the NLS. However, many visually impaired musicians require a good deal of music that has never before been transcribed to braille music, in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and many other countries, there is a network of braille music transcribers who can transcribe such music. Another option is to use a computer-music system, such systems typically allow a sighted or visually impaired user to enter music into a computerized music notation program. The software then converts the print notation that has been entered into braille music notation. One such software program is called Goodfeel, the visually impaired individual can enter music notation within the Lime program which has been scripted so that the process of music entry is entirely accessible. Then, this file can be imported into Goodfeel which converts the music into a Braille file that can be exported to a Braille embosser or read on a portable Braille display, for instance, dots 1,4,5 indicate an eighth note C. In practice beginners first learn the most common rhythmic value and ignore the other possibility, for advanced students there is never rhythmic ambiguity between the two values because the musical context, including meter signature and bar lines, makes the intended rhythmic value clear. For instance, in a measure of 4/4 time that only the symbol with dots 1,3,4
12.
Perkins Brailler
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The Perkins Brailler is a braille typewriter with a key corresponding to each of the six dots of the braille code, a space key, a backspace key, and a line space key. Like a manual typewriter, it has two knobs to advance paper through the machine and a carriage return lever above the keys. The rollers that hold and advance the paper have grooves designed to avoid crushing the raised dots the brailler creates. Although braille notation was designed for people who are blind or visually impaired to read, prior to the introduction of the Perkins Brailler, writing braille was a cumbersome process. Braille writers created braille characters with a stylus and slate or by using one of the complex, expensive, the original Perkins Brailler was produced in 1951 by David Abraham, a woodworking teacher at the Perkins School for the Blind. The director of the Perkins School for the Blind, Gabriel Farrell, asked Abraham to create an inexpensive, Farrell and Abraham worked with Edward Waterhouse, who was a math teacher at Perkins, to create the design for the Brailler. In 2008, a lighter and quieter version was developed and launched and it also includes an erase key and an integrated carrying handle. The new model won the Silver Award in the 2009 International Design Excellence Awards, a system of six cams consisting of rods with a square cross-section transfers keystrokes to the wire-like styli contained in the carriage. Tolerances are close, and the buildup of dirt with normal use necessitates periodic cleaning. With the advent of computers, many users create braille output using a computer, visually impaired users can read the computer screen by using screen reader computer software and/or braille displays. Notetakers include PDA features such as a book and calculator. Because of the moving parts and the accessibility of the refreshable braille displays to the environment. They are easily damaged and must be returned to their country of origin for periodic cleaning
13.
1829 braille
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Louis Brailles original publication, Procedure for Writing Words, Music, and Plainsong in Dots, credits Barbiers night writing as being the basis for the braille script. It differed in a way from modern braille, It contained nine decades of characters rather than the modern five. Braille recognized, however, that the dashes were problematic, being difficult to distinguish from the dots in practice, and those characters were abandoned in the second edition of the book. The first four decades indicated the 40 letters of the alphabet, the fifth the digits, the sixth punctuation, the seventh decade was also used for musical notes. Most of the characters were unassigned. As in modern braille, most of the decades were derived from the first. Decade 5 was not derived from the first, like the first decade, only the top half of the cell was used. The digit 1 was a dash in the top row,2 was dashes in the top and mid rows. 3–5 were a top dash with a left, double, and right dot in the middle, 6–8 were a mid dash with a left, double, and right dot at top. 9 and 0 were a and b shifted to the right and that is, it resembled the 3rd decade with the two bottom dots connected into a line. Decade 7 was formed with a dash in the top row of the cell and that is, it was much like the modern fifth decade with an overstruck dash at the top. Decade 8 was formed by splitting the first decade with a dash and that is, a dash appeared in the middle row, displacing the dots of that row to the bottom of the cell. In the case of first and 3rd characters, which did not have dots in the middle row and that is, this decade was equivalent to adding an overstrike to ⠄⠅⠤⠩⠡⠍⠭⠥⠌⠬. Decade 9 was derived from the fifth by adding a dash in the bottom row and these were left unassigned apart from the first three, which were used when needed as markers of words, music, and plainsong, respectively. Thus the 1st and 5th decades occupied only the top half of the cell, the supplemental signs were ⠄⠤⠜⠼ and a top dash with ⠠⠰. Of the 125 possible patterns,97 were used, the modern 5th decade and other supplemental signs do not appear in the 1829 version of braille, apart from ⠐ and ⠒ in plainsong notation. Punctuation differed slightly from today, even accounting for the shift downward when the dash was dropped from the row of the cell. Anticipating that the dashes might prove problematic, Braille provided that the supplemental sign ⠼ would shift the decade by four and that is, adding it to the first four decades would produce substitutes for the fifth through eighth
14.
International uniformity of braille alphabets
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The goal of braille uniformity is to unify the braille alphabets of the world as much as possible, so that literacy in one braille alphabet readily transfers to another. A second round of unification was undertaken under the auspices of UNESCO in 1951, Braille arranged his characters in decades, and assigned the 25 letters of the French alphabet to them in order. The characters beyond the first 25 are the source of variation today. In the first decade, only the top four dots are used, Braille is in its origin a numeric code. Louis Braille applied the characters in order to the French alphabet in alphabetical order. As braille spread to other languages, the order was retained and applied to the local script. Therefore, where the alphabetical order differed from that of French, for example, French was based on a 25-letter alphabet without a w. In the United Kingdom, however, French Braille was adopted without such reordering, therefore, any English book published in braille needed to be typeset separately for the United States and the United Kingdom. Similarly, the letters Egyptian Arabic Braille were assigned their forms based on their nearest French equivalents, so that for example Arabic d had the same braille letters as French d. For Algerian Arabic Braille, however, the characters were assigned to the Arabic alphabet according to the Arabic alphabetical order. Thus an Arabic book published in Algeria was utterly unintelligible to blind Egyptians, with the values of its symbols unaltered from those of the original French. Gradually the various reordered and frequency-based alphabets fell out of use elsewhere as well. For example, Greek γ gamma is written ⠛ g, as it is romanized, not ⠉ c, as it is ordered in the alphabet or as it is related historically to the Latin letter c. Occasional assignments are made on grounds, such as Greek ω omega. Correspondences among the basic letters of representative modern braille alphabets include, the additional letters of the extended French braille alphabet, such as ⠯, are not included in the international standard. The French ⠯, for example, corresponds to print ⟨ç⟩, whereas the ⠯ in English and German braille transcribes ⟨&⟩, and the ⠯ in Hungarian and Albanian braille is ⟨q⟩. Such languages include, Bemba, Chewa, Dobuan, Greenlandic, Huli, Indonesian, Luvale, Malagasy, Malaysian, Ndebele, Shona, Swahili, Swazi, Tok Pisin, Tolai, Xhosa, Zulu. In these languages, print digraphs such as ch are written as digraphs in braille too, languages of the Philippines are augmented with the use of the accent point with n, ⠈⠝, for ñ
15.
Braille Patterns
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In Unicode, braille is represented in a block called Braille Patterns. The block contains all 256 possible patterns of an 8-dot braille cell, in Unicode the braille characters are not defined into any script. That is, the patterns are available as symbols, without connection to a letter or a number. This is because the symbol can be used in multiple scripts, e. g. as a Latin character, a Vietnamese character, a Chinese character. For this reason – a dot-pattern is not a letter – Unicode declares that, strictly speaking, braille patterns are symbols, the General Property is So, not Lo. Beyond that declaration, however, braille is treated as a script in multiple places, E. g. the character property Script for the 256 braille code points is ISO15924 Brai, for braille. This way, searching users and programs are led to the right place, the coding is in accordance with ISO/TR 11548-1 Communication aids for blind persons. Unicode uses the standard dot-numbering 1 to 8, historically only the 6-dot cell was used in braille. The lower two dots were added later, which explains the irregular numbering 1-2-3-7 in the left column, where dots 7 and 8 are not raised, there is no distinction between 6-dot and 8-dot definitions. The Unicode name of a specific pattern mentions the raised dots, by exception, the zero dot raised pattern is named U+2800 ⠀ BRAILLE PATTERN BLANK. In the 8-dot cell each dot individually can be raised or not, by mapping each of the eight dots to a bit in a byte, and by defining 0/1 for not raised/raised per bit, every specific pattern generates an identifying binary number. So the pattern with dots 1-2-5 raised would yield 2, equivalent to 16 or 10, the mapping can also be computed by adding together the hexadecimal values, seen at right, of the dots raised. So the pattern with dots 1-2-5 raised would yield 116+216+1016 =1316, whether computed directly in hexadecimal, or indirectly via binary, the result is added to 280016, the offset for the Braille Patterns Unicode block. There is no regular mapping to the braille ASCII numbering, the Unicode names of braille dot patterns are not the same as what many English speakers would use colloquially. Some English users of braille additionally use the word and when listing only two dots, thus braille pattern dots-45 would be spoken as braille dots 4 and 5. The word and is not always used when listing many dots however, Braille was added to the Unicode Standard in September,1999 with the release of version 3.0. When using punching, the dots are to be punched. The Unicode block for braille is U+2800, the current Unicode charts, and some fonts, use empty circles to indicate dots that are not punched
16.
Amharic Braille
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Amharic Braille is the braille alphabet of the Amharic language. Letter values are mostly in line with international usage, Amharic Braille is a consonant–vowel alphabet, not an abugida like the print Amharic script. The syllabic chart at right shows a blank cell ⟨⠀⟩ being used for the vowel ⟨ə⟩ and this is perhaps an artefact of the presentation, Unesco shows it as a zero vowel that is simply not written. ⟨ə⟩ is not the default vowel in print Amharic, which is instead ⟨ä⟩. For example, el + vowel is written ለ ⠇⠢ lä, ሉ ⠇⠥ lu, ሊ ⠇⠊ li, ላ ⠇⠁ la, ሌ ⠇⠑ le, ል ⠇ lə, ሎ ⠇⠕ lo, ሏ ⠇⠭ lwa. Note that Cwə is written as if it were Cwu, a sequence which does not occur in Amharic, Amharic digits do not follow the international pattern. They are also circumfixed with ⠁, ⠆, The form of 100 suggests that the prefix ⠁ may occur before each digit, while the suffix ⠆ occurs only at the end of the number. Western numbers are marked with ⠼ as in other braille alphabets, native punctuation is as follows, The last is a tonal mark. There is also Western punctuation, Ethiopic Braille at Adaptive Technology Center for the Blind, Addis Ababa
17.
Armenian Braille
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Armenian Braille is either of two braille alphabets used for writing the Armenian language. The assignments of the Armenian alphabet to braille patterns is largely consistent with unified braille, with the same punctuation. However, Eastern and Western Armenian are assigned braille letters based on different criteria, the conventions for Western Armenian were developed in Lebanon. In Eastern Armenian, braille cells are assigned values based on the historical correspondences of the Armenian script. For this reason they closely match the Latin transliteration convention used in the table below, in Western Armenian, braille cells are assigned according to a pronunciation which diverges from the historical origin of the letters. Thus what are transliterated b g d in the table below are assigned braille values as p q th, apart from the comma and question mark above, Eastern and Western Braille use the same punctuation
18.
Bharati Braille
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Bharati braille /ˈbɑːrətiː/ BAR-ə-tee, or Bharatiya Braille, is a largely unified braille script for writing the languages of India. When India gained independence, eleven braille scripts were in use, in different parts of the country, by 1951 a single national standard had been settled on, Bharati braille, which has since been adopted by Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh. There are slight differences in the orthographies for Nepali in India and Nepal, there are significant differences in Bengali Braille between India and Bangladesh, with several letters differing. Sinhalese Braille largely conforms to other Bharati, but differs significantly toward the end of the alphabet, Bharati braille alphabets use a 6-dot cell with values based largely on English Braille. Although basically alphabetic, Bharati braille retains one aspect of Indian abugidas and this has been called a linearized alphasyllabary. For example, and taking Devanagari as a representative printed script, the braille letter ⠅ renders print क ka, to indicate that a consonant occurs without a following vowel, a virama prefix is used, ⠈⠅ is क k, and ⠈⠹ is थ th. However, unlike in print, there are no diacritics in Bharati braille, vowels are written as full letters following the consonant. Thus print क्लिक klika is written in braille as ⠈⠅⠇⠊⠅, the one time a non-initial short a is written in braille is when it is followed by another vowel. In this environment the a must be written, because otherwise the subsequent vowel will be read as following the consonant immediately, thus print ⟨कइ⟩ kai is rendered in braille as ⠅⠁⠊, to disambiguate it from ⠅⠊ for कि ki. Apart from the kṣ and jñ, Bharati braille does not handle conjuncts, consonant clusters written as conjuncts in print are handled with the virama in braille, just as they are with computer fonts that lack the conjuncts. Bharati braille is thus equivalent to Grade-1 English braille, though there are plans to all the Bharati alphabets to include conjuncts. Following are the charts of the correspondences of the main Indian scripts. Irregularities, where a letter does not match the romanized heading, are placed in parentheses, in Hindi, halanta is not used with the last letter when a word ends in a consonant. Some of the punctuation marks duplicate letters, the caps mark is only used when transcribing English. The accent, ⠈, transcribes Urdu ّ shaddah, and the colon, in Bangladesh and Nepal, several additional punctuation marks are noted, but they do not agree with each other. It is not clear which are used in India, the pointing symbol, ⠐, is used for consonant letters that in print are derived by adding a dot to another consonant. For Urdu, the letter in Devanagari is used, the pointing of the Arabic/Persian script is not reflected. For example, Gurmukhi ਗ਼ / Urdu غ / Devanagari ग़ ġa, formed by adding a dot to g in Gurmukhi, with Urdu, this is only done in India
19.
Sinhalese Braille
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Sinhalese Braille is one of the many Bharati braille alphabets. While it largely conforms to the values of other Bharati alphabets. Sinhala braille just as any other braille code is used in education, the blind community of Sri Lanka is alienating gradually from the use of braille due to a number of reasons. A recent survey reveals that only 15% of blind people use braille, today, braille usage is limited to examination purposes in educational institutions. It is worth inquiring as to what could be the reasons leading to this alienation from braille. However, the key factor is related to the Sinhala braille code. Current Sinhala braille code has its own shortcomings, the drawback being the lack of an efficient set of standard contractions. Users who have exposed to grade 2 English braille realise the importance of establishing a set of standard contractions for Sinhala Braille as well. Care must be taken to create contractions which are appropriate for the present day learners of braille and not complicated, education for the blind started in 1912 when Mary F. Chapman, a missionary lady founded a special school for the deaf and blind at Ratmalana. The use of Sinhala braille too runs as far as the beginning of the 20th century, at the beginning, English characters were used to represent Sinhala letters. The Sinhala alphabet comprises 60 letters whereas English has only 26, moreover, Sinhala has a syllable based alphabet and two English characters had to be used to represent one Sinhala consonant, thus distorting the semblance to sighted print. Therefore, this method was not practical although many continued to use it as there was no alternative at the time. In 1947, the first non-foreign principal of the school for the blind at Ratmalana, dassanaike, introduced a more practical code which was influenced by the principles and practices of the English braille code. Since then, Sinhala braille has played a significant role in education and communication, nevertheless, a grade 2 or braille contraction code had not yet been adapted for Sinhala braille, causing lot of inconvenience in using and storing braille material. Several attempts were made in 1959,1968 and 1997 to introduce Sinhala braille contractions, but, none of these attempts can be observed today. The contractions introduced in 1959, were mere shortening of long words, sufficient consideration was not given to the structure of the Sinhala language. Although, the structure of the language was taken into consideration in contractions introduced in 1968, a large amount of words were contracted in 1997, but it too received the same fate because, some of the contractions were illogical. In addition to these attempts, most braille users use their own methods of contractions
20.
Burmese Braille
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Burmese Braille is the braille alphabet of languages of Burma written in the Burmese script, including Burmese and Karen. Letters that may not seem at first glance to correspond to international norms are more recognizable when traditional romanization is considered. For example, သ s is rendered ⠹ th, which is how it was romanized when Burmese Braille was developed, the first braille alphabet for Burmese was developed by a Father Jackson ca. These aspects have all changed, as have several of the letters for the values which were retained. However, some of the old letters, unusual by international standards, remain, such as ⠌ for င ng, the letters in print Burmese transcribe consonants and, in syllable-initial position, vowels. The consonants each have a letter in braille, but the initial vowels in print are in braille all written ⠰ plus the letter for the appropriate diacritic. The consonant ny has two forms in print which are distinct in braille as well, the stacking of consonants in print is indicated with ⠤ in braille. That is, Burmese Braille has two viramas, one corresponding to print virama, and one corresponding to stacking, for example, ကမ္ဘာ kambha world is written ⠅⠍⠤⠃⠁. For example, The following punctuation is specific to Burmese, Western punctuation presumably uses Western braille conventions
21.
Czech Braille
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Czech Braille is the braille alphabet of the Czech language. Like braille in other Latin-script languages, Czech Braille assigns the 25 basic Latin letters the same as Louis Brailles original assignments for French, with the exception of w, Czech follows international norms for the basic letters of the alphabet. For letters with diacritics, there are two strategies, a dot 6 may be added, or the letter is reversed. The Czech braille letter ř is the form for w, so w has been assigned an idiosyncratic form. É and ě are not derived from e, but are the reverse of each other, the numerical prefix, ⠼, derives the second options in the table. ⠠ indicates a letter, ⠰ that a word is in all caps. There are also prefixes for small and capital Greek letters, ⠘ and ⠨, Ô is equivalent to Czech Braille ů, and it doesnt have the letters ě or ř. In addition, there are four letters not found in Czech Braille, Czech Republic United Organization for the Blind,2006, Slepecká Braillova abeceda
22.
English Braille
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English Braille, also known as Grade-2 Braille, is the braille alphabet used for English. It consists of 250 or so letters, numerals, punctuation marks, formatting marks, contractions, some English Braille letters, such as ⠡ ⟨ch⟩, correspond to more than one letter in print. There are three levels of complexity in English Braille, Grade 1 is a one-to-one transcription of printed English, and is restricted to basic literacy. Grade 2, which is universal in print beyond basic literacy materials, abandons one-to-one transcription in many places. Grade 3 is not a system, but any of various personal shorthands. It is almost never found in publications, most of this article describes the 1994 American edition of Grade-2 Braille, which is largely equivalent to British Grade-2 Braille. Some of the differences with Unified English Braille, which was adopted by various countries between 2005 and 2012, are discussed at the end. Braille was originally intended, and is portrayed, as a re-encoding of the English orthography that is used by sighted people. However, for the blind, braille is an independent writing system, Braille was introduced to Britain in 1861. In 1876, a French-based system with a few hundred English contractions and abbreviations was adopted as the predominant script in Great Britain, however, the contractions and abbreviations proved unsatisfactory, and in 1902 the current grade-2 system, called Revised Braille, was adopted in the British Commonwealth. In 1878, the ideal of basing all braille alphabets of the world on the original French alphabetic order was accepted by Britain, Germany, and Egypt. A partially contracted English Braille, Grade 1½, was adopted in Britain in 1918, in 1991, an American proposal was made for Unified English Braille, intended to eliminate the confusion caused by competing standards for academic uses of English Braille. After several design revisions, it has since adopted by the Commonwealth countries starting in 2005. The chief differences with Revised Braille are in punctuation, symbols, and formatting, more accurately reflecting print conventions in matters such as brackets, mathematical notation, the 64 braille patterns are arranged into decades based on the numerical order of those patterns. In addition, for each there are two additional mirror-image patterns, and finally there are three patterns that utilize only the bottom row of the cell. The final pattern, the empty cell ⟨⠀⟩, is used as a space, cells 1 through 25 plus 40 are assigned to the 26 letters of the basic Latin alphabet. The other 37 cells, when they are used at all, are used for punctuation and are typically assigned different values in different languages. The English grade-two values are as follows, cells with dots on only the right side do not have equivalents in printed English, and are explained in the notes
23.
French Braille
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French Braille is the original braille alphabet, and the basis of all others. The alphabetic order of French has become the basis of the international braille convention, punctuation is as follows, The lower values are readings within numbers. Formatting and mode-changing marks are, As in English Braille, the sign is doubled for all caps. ⟨⠢⟩ and ⟨⠔⟩ are used to begin. This is the internationally recognized number system, however, in French Braille a new system, the Antoine braille digits, is used for mathematics and is recommended for all academic publications. This uses ⠠ combined with the first nine letters of the decade, from ⠠⠡ for ⟨1⟩ to ⠠⠪ for ⟨9⟩. The period/decimal and fraction bar also change, the Antoine numbers are being promoted in France and Luxembourg, but are not much used in with French Braille in Quebec. See the punctuation section above for Antoine mathematical notation, readings have changed slightly since modern braille was first published in 1837. The greatest change has been various secondary readings which were added to the alphabet, in general, only the assignments of the basic 26 letters of the French alphabet are retained in other braille alphabets. For example, among the additional letters, in German Braille only ü and ö coincide with French Braille, however, there are several alphabets which are much more closely related. Flemish Dutch uses the French Braille alphabet, in contrast to the German-derived Netherlands Dutch Braille, Italian Braille is identical to the French apart from doubling up French Braille ò to Italian ó and ò, since French has no ó. Indeed, a difference of these alphabets is the remapping of French vowels with a grave accent to an acute accent. Spanish changes all five of these vowels, as well as taking ü, the continental Scandinavian languages took the extended French letters â, ä/æ, and ö/ø. Vietnamese Braille is also similar, though it has added tone letters, and according uses French ⠵ z for d. Catalan Braille adds ⠇⠐⠇ for print ⟨l·l⟩, and Spanish Braille uses ⠻ for the non-French consonant ñ, luxembourgish Braille has since switch to eight-point braille, adding a dot at point 8 for the three vowels with accents. Punctuation and formatting are in general similar as well, though changes in French punctuation over time means that languages use older French conventions. For example, French parentheses and quotation marks originally had the values they do today. Other changes have accrued over time, and in some cases vary from country to country
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German Braille
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German Braille is one of the older braille alphabets. The French-based order of the letter assignments was largely settled on with the 1878 convention that decided the standard for international braille, however, the assignments for German letters beyond the 26 of the basic Latin alphabet are mostly unrelated to French values. In numerical order by decade, the letters are, The generic accent sign, there are numerous contractions and abbreviations. These can be found in the link in the reference section. Punctuation is as follows, Only the first asterisk is marked with dot 6, so print *** is in braille ⠠⠔⠔⠔. ⠴ is the Artikel sign, for the brackets of phonetic transcription, German Braille uses a modified form, ⠰⠶⠀⠰⠶. Additional punctuation and symbols, especially mathematical, are explained in the reference below. Numbers are introduced with the sign ⠼ and they are dropped to decade 5 for ordinals and for the denominator of fractions. So, for example, ⠼⠙ is ⟨4⟩, while ⠼⠲ is ⟨4. ⟩, the percent sign requires the number sign even after a number, ⠼⠃⠼⠴ ⟨2%⟩, otherwise it would look like the fraction ²⁄₀. In a compound fraction, a repeat of the number sign separate the units from the fraction, the emphasis sign is marked with an extra point, ⠠⠸, when it occurs in the middle of a word. It is doubled, ⠸⠸, when more than one word is emphasized, the all-caps sign is used for initialisms and the like. Doubled, it is used for text, such as titles. Names with initials, such as J. S, bach, do not require the cap sign. Lower-case metric units are marked as lower-case, ⠠⠅⠘⠺ ⟨kW⟩ and this is useful, as it ends the scope of the number sign ⠼, ⠼⠁⠉⠚⠠⠓⠨⠏⠁ ⟨130 hPa⟩, ⠼⠁⠉⠚⠠⠅⠘⠧⠁ ⟨130 kVA⟩. Das System der deutschen Blindenschrift,2005
