Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/666

648 a sheet of paper, and with the stylus trace the letters of the usual alphabet, rounding the angles and neglecting the connections. The relief of the cords permits the letters to be made of equal height. After a short period of training, lines of letters can be written in intaglio for the blind man to read, by turning the paper over, in relief. If any difficulty is met in writing inversely, let it be done

 1. Austrian hollow stylus.?. Stylus for the Goldberg tablet. 3. Ballu's stylus with an effacer. 4. Another model by Ballu, with a wooden effacer. 5 and 6. Common models. 7. Danish form.

in the regular order, and the blind reader, who has been accustomed to reverse his Braille characters, will have but little difficulty in making them out in their inverse shape.

Among other systems of writing for the blind, the most important is the English system, invented by Moon in 1847, and in which the first journal for the blind was printed. The signs are composed of points set very close together, or of lines in relief, reproducing simplified forms of ordinary letters. The Braille system has been introduced into England by Dr. Armitage, and is spreading in the English colonies. Germany, where the usual writing printed in relief was formerly used, definitely adopted the Braille system in 1879. It has been introduced into Russia and the Scandinavian countries. It is used exclusively in Italy, Belgium, end a part of Switzerland, and has been adopted in a few schools in the United States for music, while for the alphabet it has been modified or other systems are used.

The raphigraph is a machine devised by Braille and Foucault to facilitate communication between the blind and seeing people. It consists of a key-board with ten keys ending in needles and