In 1837 Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-76), founder and president of the New England Institute for the Education of the Blind, published the first fully usable atlas for the blind printed in the United States of America. This would become known as the Perkins Institute for the Blind. He was also the husband of Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) the noted American abolitionist and poet. The DAB describes him as a “champion of peoples and persons labouring under disability … he showed the world that the young blind both could and should be economically and socially competent”. Howe was at the forefront of his profession and even installed a printing press to publish works for the blind. He designed a modified roman alphabet known as the ‘Howe type’. Howe described in his own words that “after hesitating a long time whether to use a new phonetic alphabet, or a series of stenographic characters, or the common alphabet, I adopted the latter; not, however, without adhering to the opinion that one of the others must eventually be used in printed for the blind. Having decided to use the common alphabet, slightly varied, I endeavoured to reduce the bulk of each letter to the minimum size which the blind could feel”. He did however eventually recognize the need for a printing system such as Braille.

Following his initial productions Howe began to notice that his students could recognise visual elements as well as text. “They soon understood that sheets of stiff pasteboard, marked by certain crooked lines, represented the boundaries of countries; rough raised dots represented mountains; pins heads sticking out here and there, showed the location of towns; or, on a smaller scale, the boundaries of their own town, the location of the meeting-house, of their own and of the neighbouring houses, and the like; and they were delighted and eager to go on with tireless curiosity. And they did go on until they matured in years, and became themselves teachers, first in our school, afterwards in a private school opened by themselves in their own town”.

The first successful printing of relief for the blind occurred in Paris in 1784. Osier believed that there were less than fifty titles printed in English before 1850. Most were of very limited production. There exists a map believed to be of Boston which was issued earlier than this work, possibly as a trial. Another earlier work exists but it required the presence of a sighted person. This atlas was the first that could be used unaided. The maps were prepared and printed by Samuel P. Ruggles. The Annual Report of the Trustees of Perkins in 1835 states “The director has been engaged in a series of experiments upon making maps for the blind, which has resulted in the contrivance of means of embossing, which will be much better than those used in any of the European institutions, and which can be multiplied at a very cheap rate. A set of maps will soon be finished, forming an atlas for the blind superior to anything of the kind yet made public.”

This is an example of the Annual Report of the Perkins Institute for 1840 which contains an embossed map of Nantucket, the Sound and the eastern portion of Martha’s Vineyard. for the use of the blind. The main town is indicated by a dot, the sea is indicated as are the four compass points and degrees of longitude and latitude. The Report records the name change to the Perkins Institute on page 5. Page 8 refers to arguably their most famous student ‘there is one whose situation is so peculiar, and show case is so interesting in a philosophical point of view, that we cannot forbear making particular mention of it; we allude to Laura Bridgman, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl …’ Laura Bridgman (1829-1889) was the first of her kind to attain a good education. There are three Appendices the second of which describes in ten pages the improvement in Bridgman’s studies. A fine example of an extremely rare item. Provenance Tom Moebs Catalogue 1980s. DAB; Not in Howes; Mapline Number 6 June 1977 ‘Early Map for the Blind’; OCLC no. 27209112; Osier, Donald V., University of Minnesota (private correspondence from the late 1970s; Perkins Books for the Blind. Section I. 1907; ‘Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe’, ed. L. E. Richards, Boston, 1909; Not in Sabin.