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
