the premier organisation of and for the sightless in West Bengal
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Blind Persons' Association the premier organisation of and for the sightless in West Bengal |
| Date | Event |
| 1254 | King Louis IX of France founded Quinze-Vingts, the first-ever formal institution for sightless people, providing 300 French knights whose eyes were put out as a punishment by the Saracens during the crusade |
| 1745 | Valentin Haüy, the founder of the first blind school, was born |
| 1771 | Haüy witnessed 8 sightless people from Quinze-Vingts performing a jocular dance at the St. Ovid's Fair in Paris and became convinced of their potentials |
| 1784 | Valentin Haüy founded the Royal Institution for Blind Children, the world's first blind school in Paris depending on books of raised letters on soaked paper |
| The following blind schools were soon founded using many of Haüy's ideas and methods | |
| 1791 | First blind school established in England at Liverpool |
| 1804 | First blind school established in Austria at Vienna |
| 1806 | First blind school established in Germany at Berlin |
| 1808 | Ironically, the first working print typewriter was devised in Italy to help a blind countess produce legible writing for sighted people |
| 1822 | Valentin Haüy died in Paris |
| 1824 | Louis Braille developed Braille system (named after him and used now all over the world) upon Charles Barbier's artillery code of dots and dashes using 6 dots |
| 1837 | The State of Ohio set up the first blind school in the USA |
| 1841 | A blind inventor, Pierre Foucault, invented a machine called a "piston board," to punch complete dot-drawn letters |
| 1847 | Pierre Foucault invented the "keyboard printer" (essentially, a typewriter) enabling blind people to write to sighted people in black type |
| 1868 | William Bell Wait introduced New York Point system, a variant of Braille, popularly used in America (later eclipsed by braille system) |
| 1886 | First institution for the sightless in India set up at Amritswar |
| 1894 | The setting up of Calcutta Blind School, the first of its kind in Eastern India, by Lal Bihari Shah |
| 1916 | Braille was adopted as the standard method of reading and writing for sightless people in the USA |
| Date | Event |
| 1809 Jan.4 | Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille system, was born at Coupvray near Paris |
| 1812 | Louis injured his eye in an accident while playing with his father's tools |
| 1819 | Louis got admission in Haüy's school |
| 1823 | Louis saw the tactile artillery code of dots and dashes used for communication in the dark developed by Charles Barbier |
| 1824 | Louis developed Braille system upon Barbier's method using 6 dots |
| 1829 | Louis published Method of Writing Words, Music, and Plain Songs by Means of Dots, for Use by the Blind and Arranged for Them, his first complete book about his new system |
| 1834 | Demonstration of Braille's system in the International Paris Exposition of Industry |
| 1837 | The first braille book, a three-volume history of France, was published |
| 1852 Jan.6 | Louis Braille died of tuberculosis |
| 1854 | France adopted Braille as its official communications system for blind people | 1870 | Acceptance of Braille system throughout Europe |
| 1952 | Louis's body was interred in the Pantheon on his death centenary following a huge public ceremony at the Sorbonne attended by dignitaries from all over the world including Helen Keller |
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