History of the Deaf (1700-1880)

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This article deals with the history of the deaf or Deaf History in the 18th century, the time of Samuel Heinicke and the Abbé de l'Epée , as well as the 19th century, the time of Abbé Sicard , Eduard Fürstenberg , Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell until the Milan Congress of 1880 .

Dates and events from 1700 to 1880

18th century, Samuel Heinicke and the Abbé de l'Epée

From around 1700 onwards, the main known events and developments took place primarily in German-speaking countries, France and New England and the USA. They influenced each other partly, partly the developments in the same period ran in different directions. To make this visible and comparable, an attempt is made with the parallel representation of data and events in three columns.

Samuel Heinicke and the Abbé de l'Epée are involved in the educational care of deaf children, using different methods they provide the basis for the later methodological dispute of the "deaf and dumb" and deaf education in the 19th and 20th centuries.

German-speaking countries France England and New England
1700

Johann Konrad Ammann , (1669–1724?) Son of a wholesale merchant in Schaffhausen Switzerland , life dates unclear, received his doctorate in 1696 or 1749 (?) In Leiden , Holland as a doctor of medicine and became a “deaf-mute doctor and teacher”. He invented an "oral" method of teaching deaf children, which is said to have been adopted later by Samuel Heinicke and John Wallis (1616–1703) in England.
According to other sources, however, Ammann is said to have translated the phonetics theory developed by Wallis into German and improved it 1 .


- No known events -

1710
Immigration to Martha's Vineyard Island practically comes to a standstill. Descendants of the settlers from the Kentish Weald live mainly in the villages of Tisbury and Chilmark.

1740

- No known events -

1744
Jacob Rodrigues Pereira (1715–1780) begins teaching deaf students as the first teacher in France. Pereira is proficient in sign language herself but prefers to teach students orally. Allegedly he follows the methods described by Juan Pablo Bonet . For his spoken language-oriented lessons, he creates and uses a phonetically oriented finger alphabet instead of the orthographic finger alphabet, which is supposed to allow faster communication in French .

He met Etienne de Fay's pupil Azy d'Etavigny , taught him to speak and then showed him to the King and the Academy in Paris in 1749 .

1740
The number of pigeons on Martha's Vineyard has increased steadily since the end of the 17th century, peaking at 45 in this decade. The proportion of pigeons in the island's population is 1: 155, in the town of Tisbury alone 1:49, in Chilmark 1:25.

1750

1755
The Saxon bodyguard Samuel Heinicke (1727–1790) teaches children in writing and music. He also teaches spoken language to a deaf boy .

1760
The Abbé Charles-Michel de l'Epée (1712–1789) is introduced to two deaf children whose educator had died shortly before. He takes the sisters in and continues to teach them. From observing the gestures they used among themselves and following the idea of a natural upbringing (according to Rousseau ), he also used these gestures in class.

1760
Thomas Braidwood (1715–1806) founds a private school for deaf children in Edinburgh. Braidwood accepts "natural gestures" as long as the spoken language is not mastered and uses the two-hand finger alphabet , which is still in use in Great Britain to this day .

1770

1769
Samuel Heinicke, who moved to Eppendorf (Hamburg) near Hamburg after being a prisoner of war , studying and getting married , becomes cantor and village schoolmaster. Here he also teaches a deaf pupil who can then confirm in writing. Allegedly Heinicke followed the teachings of the Swiss-Dutch doctor Johann Conrad Ammann (1669-1724) with his teaching methods.

1771
The Abbé de l'Epée takes more deaf children to school and founds the “Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets de Paris”. It is mostly regarded as the first school for pigeons in the world.

Abbé de l'Epée follows Descartes ' view that language is a system of signs that exists outside of humans . It is therefore possible to arbitrarily combine thing and sign in any way, including thing and gesture . Based on this idea, he developed a system of “methodical signs” from the “natural gesture signs” he observed, with additional additions through grammatical signs. (Further remarks on goals and methods de l'Epées )
It can be assumed that Abbé de l'Epées “methodical signs” through the addition of grammatical signs and the reference to the French grammar corresponds roughly to what is today in contrast to the real one Sign language is understood as spoken language accompanying signs (LBG).
The method of teaching with sign language is now internationally referred to as the “French method”, especially in contrast to the “German method” by Samuel Heinicke, which is (incorrectly) understood as purely spoken language-oriented or “ oral ”.


- No known events -

1777
Pastor Heinrich Keller founds the first small “deaf and mute school” in Switzerland by taking two deaf boys into his rectory in Schlieren .

1778
Samuel Heinicke moves with his now 9 students from Eppendorf to Leipzig and founds the “Chursächsisches Institut for the dumb and other people with language disabilities”. Heinicke's goal is to primarily introduce his students to spoken language and to teach them in it. However, he also uses signs to explain the concepts of spoken language.

Heinicke's method is defined internationally as the "German method" with the erroneous reduction to the spoken language or " oral " aspect and in contrast to the methods of the French Abbé de l'Epée.

In 1776 the
Abbé de l'Epée publishes the work “Institution des sourds-muets par la voie des signes méthodiques” and in 1784 “La véritable manière d'instruire les sourds et muets, confirmée par une longue expérience” and begins a “General Lexicon of Signs ", which was completed by his successor, the Abbé Abbé Sicard .


- No known events -

1779
Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II , founds the Vienna Institute for the Deaf and Dumb after he had got to know the School de l'Epées and its teaching results on a trip to France. The first two directors (Johann Friedrich Stork and Joseph May) are sent to the National Institute in Paris for training.

1779
Pierre Desloges (1742–?), Deaf bookbinder and furniture decorator writes the only book of this century that was written exclusively by a “deaf-mute”. He points out that structured sign language was used in France long before the methodological signs of the Abbé de l'Epée were invented.

1783
The private school for deaf children founded by Thomas Braidwood in Edinburgh moves to Hackney , London , England .

1780

1788
Ernst Adolf Eschke (1766 to 1811), Heinicke's son-in-law, founded the school in Berlin. Eschke followed Heinicke's mostly oral method rather than a method that also gave more room to sign language .

1789
Abbé de l'Epées successor Abbé Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard further expands the system of methodical signs. He employs intellectually very high-quality former students as teachers and conducts successful public relations work.
1791
The French National Assembly decrees the inclusion of the Abbé de l'Epée on the list of “benefactors of humanity”. The private “Paris Institute” is transformed into the state “National Institute”. In 1838 a bronze bust was erected over the Abbé de l'Epées grave in the church of Saint-Roch in Paris.

1793
The French Revolution broke out. After a denunciation by a former colleague, Abbé Sicard is brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which usually pronounces a death sentence or deportation. His pupil Jean Massieu then presented a petition to the assembly in which “The deaf and dumb pupils of the Abbé Sicard” plead for the “return of their father, friend and teacher”. The gathering is deeply moved when its secretary reads Massieu's request. Sicard escapes execution or deportation.


- No known events -

1799 Georg Wilhelm Pfingsten founded a school
in Kiel , which moved to Schleswig in 1810.

1797
The deaf Laurent Clerc , who would one day become the most important historical figure of the American pigeons, joins the National Institute for the Deaf-Mute in Paris at the age of 12.


- No known events -

19th century - the dispute over methods

Towards the end of the 18th century there were 21 schools for the deaf, some of which tried to teach deaf children primarily the spoken language.

Increasingly, people are judged on their social usefulness. The deaf and mute and making it usable for the bourgeois craftsman and other trades is an exemplary title of a presentation given by a JM Weinberger in Vienna in 1805 for this idea. This introduced the “industrial school concept” into the education system for the deaf and dumb.

There is always a discussion about which language the deaf should learn - that of the hearing, the spoken language that they do not understand themselves or only incompletely or their own sign language that the hearing cannot understand?

The Abbé de l'Epée created the sign language-oriented teaching model, later called the "French method", which competes with the mostly oral-oriented model by Samuel Heinicke, which is known as the "German method". This gave rise to the “method dispute”, which then continued for over two hundred years and has not yet come to an end.

Paradoxically, the dispute does not take place between the two countries, but rather within the country: In France and especially at the "National Institute for the Deaf and Mute" the oral method is introduced and in Germany sign language is spreading in the classroom.

In this century, the concept of “deaf-mute education” also begins to gain a foothold in the USA.

German-speaking countries France United States
1800

1803

The deaf student Johann Carl Habermaß (1783 Berlin - 1826 Berlin) was sponsored by Eschke. Habermaß worked as an assistant teacher from 1803 and then as a teacher from 1811 until his death. At times he also led seminars for prospective teachers.

1808
Sicard presents the dictionary of sign language "Théorie de signes" in 2 volumes 9.

1812
John Braidwood, grandson of Thomas Braidwood in London, founds a school for deaf children in Cobb , Virginia in 1812 , but it has only existed for a short time.

1817
The deaf Otto Friedrich Kruse (1801–1880) attends the Whitsun school in Kiel and Schleswig and becomes an assistant teacher there in 1817. After that, Kruse was a private teacher in Altona and Bremen for nine years, until he returned to the Deaf-Mute Institute in Schleswig in 1834 as a class teacher and subject teacher. In 1872 he retired. He left behind many writings and also tried, with articles in the magazines of the T-teachers, to encourage a critical attitude towards the oral method, which had become one-sided. He received four medals for his services, in 1873 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Gallaudet College in Washington.

1818
Baron Hugo von Schütz (1780 Camberg - 1847 Wiesbaden), pupil of Stork and May from 1788 to 1797 at the Viennese school, gives private lessons for the deaf and dumb children in Camberg. In 1818 he founded a private school there. The school was nationalized in 1820 and he worked as its director until the post was mysteriously abandoned in 1828.

1815
Accompanied by his former pupils and current teacher colleagues Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc , Abbé Sicard holds public lectures in London through Fouché and thus earns applause.

During their stay in London, Sicard, Clerc and Massieu meet the American Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who is researching methods of teaching deaf children.

1815
In the USA the preacher Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet meets the 9-year-old deaf Alice Cogswell and learns that there is no school for the deaf in America. Alice's father, Dr. Mason Cogswell, asked Gallaudet to conduct research in Europe on teaching methods for deaf children, particularly among the Braidwood family in England.
Gallaudet finds the Braidwoods reluctant to share their knowledge, and the results of the oral ( spoken language ) method used there unsatisfactory. In London he meets Abbé Sicard , head of the French “Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets” in Paris and two of his deaf faculty members, Laurent Clerc and Jean Massieu . Sicard invites Gallaudet to Paris to study the methods there.
Impressed by the success of sign language "manual" method Gallaudet studied teaching methodology under Sicard and learned sign language from Massieu and Clerc, both educated graduates of the school. On his return trip in 1816, Gallaudet asked Laurent Clerc to accompany him.

1817
Clerc and Gallaudet travel across the United States collecting donations. The Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb and Blinds, the first school for the deaf in America, is set up in Hartford , Connecticut .
It continues to this day under the name " American School for the Deaf " at the same location.

1820

1820
L. Graßhoff suggests founding a deaf-mute congregation on a site near Berlin for the graduates of the Royal Institute. The rationale for his proposal was that sign language was not understood by the hearing and that even if the deaf could speak and write, there would be no conversation between the two.

In the first half of the 19th century, the “ generalization tendency ” developed in Germany , which roughly corresponds to today's idea of ​​“ mainstreaming ”.

1822
The immediate successors of Sicard, Abbé Goudelin (1822–1823) and Abbé Périer (1823–1827) still adhere to the given method.

1824
Roch-Ambroise Auguste Bébian (1789–1839) was the first deaf teacher in France and the author of “Mimography” published in 1825, a description of “natural signs”.

1825
Martha's Vineyard children are sent to the American Asylum in Connecticut for schooling. The American Sign Language ASL (American Sign Language) is formed here from the French sign language of the first teacher Laurent Clerc and the already well-developed sign language of the children from Martha's Vineyard, which in turn has its origin in the sign language of the settlers from the Kentish Weald.

1826
The director of the Vienna School, Michael Venus, publishes a book of methods: “M. Venus, method book or instructions for teaching the deaf and dumb ”, Vienna 1826. Under his direction numerous teachers were trained in Vienna, who later founded institutes.

The Vienna School exerts considerable influence on schools in southern Germany. Her teaching method: Each new word is conveyed using hand alphabet and writing and explained using natural and artificial signs.
Didactic principle: the deaf and mute cannot learn the language without combining it with language teaching. Therefore, the structure of the language is based on a fixed canon which is structured according to grammatical aspects.

As a successor to Samuel Heinicke, the northern German states adhere to the principle of the spoken language method in theory, but are nevertheless influenced by the sign method in practice. Instead of “thinking in tonal language” (Heinicke), there are signs, writing and the finger alphabet.

1828
The ear doctor Jean Itard (1774–1838), who was called to the institute by Sicard , undertook listening training attempts to use and develop spoken language. His approach was to use the leftover hearing to learn and imitate spoken language. Since he could not find any teachers for his articulation exercises in the predominantly deaf college, he taught himself.
On his recommendation, the Ministry of the Interior set up an "articulation class" in the national institute.

In his will, Itard obliged the board of directors of the institute to set up a “class of articulation”.

1831
Désiré Ordinaire introduces the “Orale Method” as the new director of the Paris National Institute. Ordinaire, doctor of medicine and professor of natural history, previously traveled to Switzerland and visited so-called “humanities institutions” there. He studied the spoken language method and represented it sustainably in several writings.

The deaf fellow citizens of Martha's Vineyard are integrated into the island's community in every way. They are free to marry the hearing or the deaf. According to tax records, most of them have average or above average incomes and some of them are even wealthy.

The hearing residents are proficient in sign language and use it even when no other deaf person is present. Vineyarders believe that deaf citizens are as widespread around the world as they are. They are later - around 1895 - very astonished when they are the subject of newspaper reports and research.

It is reported that by the 19th century, all but one deaf Vineyarders could read and write English .

1830

1848
The deaf Eduard Fürstenberg (1827 Berlin - 1885 Berlin) founds the "General Deaf and Mute Support Association of Greater Berlin e. V. “, the first in Germany, and becomes its chairman.

1849
Eduard Fürstenberg founds the “Central Association for the Welfare of the Deaf and Mute in Berlin”. V. “, which he leads until his death.

1834
The first of the famous "deaf-mute banquets" is held in Paris. The organizer is Ferdinand Berthier (1803–1886), who, along with Jean Massieu (1772–1846) and Laurent Clerc (1785–1869), is one of the most famous teachers of the deaf in France. Later it is said of this year that "It was the year in which the deaf and mute established a kind of self-determination for themselves that continues to this day." ( Bernard Mottez , Paris)

1834
The French deaf-mute association is founded

1843
The United States now has six other schools for the deaf: New York (since 1818), Pennsylvania (since 1820), Kentucky (since 1823), Ohio (since 1827), Virginia (since 1838), and Indiana (since 1843) . Half of the teachers in these schools are deaf themselves.

1850

- No known events -


- No known events -

1856
The journalist and politician Amos Kendall , like many other citizens of Washington, DC, is asked for donations for a school for deaf and blind children. When Kendall learns that the children, most of whom are from New York State , are receiving little care, Kendall successfully requests the authorities to incorporate them. He also donates two acres of his Washington, DC property to found the school.

1857
The Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind is founded in Washington, DC, with Edward Miner Gallaudet , the late-born son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet , becoming its first director . The school's patroness is the deaf widow of TH Gallaudet, Sophia Fowler Gallaudet.

1860
In Prussia , the "deaf and mute school" begins to split off from the elementary school.


- No known events -

1860
The deaf children of Martha's Vineyard who visit the American Asylum in Connecticut stay there until they are 15 or even 20. Later they often marry other students from this institution who are deaf for other reasons and possibly also with other genetic makeup. The hearing people on the island also marry into foreign families. As a result, the number of children born deaf on the island is falling dramatically. In 1870 only one deaf child was born in the village of Chilmark, at the turn of the century there were only 15 pigeons left on the island, the last of which died in 1952.

1869
Otto Friedrich Kruse warns against oralism in 1869 with his text "To convey the extremes in the so-called German and French deaf-mute teaching method."

1866
Léon Vaisse (1859–1872) was the first official assessor of the articulation courses. In 1842 he traveled to schools for the deaf in Switzerland, Germany and Holland. In 1866 he became director of the Paris National Institute. With the help of a partially new college, he succeeds in including articulation lessons and reading in the general program.
His efforts to teach articulation have little success here, allegedly because of the indifference of the board of directors and the passive resistance of the college, of whose six professors (teachers) four are deaf and therefore cannot take over articulation lessons. Vaisse resigned from office in 1872.

1863 In
1860, the deaf and dumb teacher Philip A. Emery moves from Indianapolis to the Wakarusa Valley in Kansas . His neighbor there, Jonathan R. Kennedy, is the father of three deaf children, who asks Emery to set up a school for them. Emery rents a two room cabin in Baldwin City . On February 26, 1863, Governor Thomas Carney ordered Emery to pay $ 1,500 for teaching deaf children and $ 4 per week to care for each child between the ages of eight and 21. This opens the first school for pigeons in Kansas.

1864
US President Abraham Lincoln signs an ordinance with which the now “American Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb” is guaranteed college status. The name of the institution is changed to "National College for the Deaf and Dumb".

Gardiner Greene Hubbard, later business partner of Alexander Graham Bell, sends his deaf daughter Mabel, later wife of Bell, to Germany to attend school. Hubbard was so impressed by the results that he proposed that the Massachusetts government set up an orally oriented school for the deaf. Through the mediation of a friend, Hubbard met Harriet B. Rogers, who was teaching some deaf children. With funding from Hubbard, Harriet B. Rogers was able to set up a school with five children in Chelmsford in 1866.

1865
The blind students leave college and the institute is renamed the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, while the college becomes the National Deaf-Mute College. It later becomes the "Gallaudet College" or the "Gallaudet University".

1866
Melville Ballard is the first graduate graduate with the degree of "Bachelor of Science". 25 students from 16 EU countries attend the college.

1867
Gallaudet travels through several European countries to study the methods at well-known schools for the deaf. After his return, he recommends the establishment of speaking and lip reading classes for those students who show positive signs of doing so.

John Clarke, a merchant in Northampton, Massachusetts, who later became deaf, is putting up a $ 50,000 fund to set up a school for the deaf in his home town. The governor of Massachusetts connects Clarke, Hubbard and Harriet B. Rogers. With the money from Clarke they set up the first permanent oral (spoken language) oriented school for deaf in Northampton, today's "Clarke School for the Deaf / Center for Oral Education". A campaign for the “oral method” begins in America. Actively supported by Presidents Calvin B. Coolidge (–1929), married to Clarke School teacher Grace Goodhue and John F. Kennedy (–1963), former Senator from Massachusetts , the Clarke School takes a leading role in the movement towards the oral School education a.

1870

1870
Prussia: The separation of the deaf-and-dumb school from the elementary school is established by law, the special school system is set up.

Although the generalization movement (1821 - approx. 1860) failed, it ensured the spread of the oral method with many schools in Europe in which hearing and deaf-mute pupils were taught together. "Oralism" is ideologically and politically motivated to assert itself.

1872
Eduard Fürstenberg publishes the magazine “Der Taubstummenfreund”.

1873 Eduard Fürstenberg
organizes the first congresses for the deaf and mute . This invites the chairmen of the already existing German “deaf and dumb clubs” to a meeting in Berlin. This meeting is known as the “First German Deaf-Mute Congress”. He was followed by: Vienna 1874, Dresden 1875, Leipzig, 1878, Prague 1881, Stockholm 1884, Hamburg 1892, Wiesbaden 1894, Nuremberg 1896, Stuttgart 1899, Berlin 1902, Leipzig 1905, Munich 1908, Hamburg 1911, Breslau 1914.

1874
German deaf and dumb congress in Vienna 1874. School issues were also discussed at the congresses: compulsory schooling, extension of school time, advanced training features, kindergarten, schools for the less gifted, teacher training. A resolution will be drawn up aiming for the deaf teachers to remain in schools and for sign language to be preserved in schools.

1872
Leon Vaisse resigns as director of the Paris National Institute. Martin Etcheverry
is his successor . He sticks to the predominantly sign language lessons, but acts as an intermediary.

1875
Isaac and Eugene Pereire, son and grandson of Jacob Rodrigues Pereira , who came to prosperity and influence in Paris, want to preserve the reputation of their ancestor, who was always overshadowed by de l'Epées, by founding the "Pereire Society" and open a spoken language school with nine students. The director becomes Marius Magnat, who worked in the school built by Renz in Geneva in 1866 from 1872 to 1875.
Magnat's predecessor at the school in Geneva was Jacques Hugentobler (1869–1872), who later worked in France and was very influential.

1876
Etcheverry compares the methods of these countries in his work “Die Taubstummen in Frankreich und Deutschland”, Cöslin 1880, and comes to the conclusion that the differences are not so significant.
"If, on the basis of the means used in teaching the deaf and dumb, one examines the current state of affairs (1876) in France, one will see without difficulty that the difference between the methods is rather insignificant ...

School lessons at the “Institution de Paris” consist of three courses:

  • The elementary education course (le cours d'instruction élémentaire) introduces students to the first principles of grammar.
  • The primary instruction course (le cours d'instruction primaire) teaches a more widespread application of these principles.
  • The purpose of the complementary course (le cours complimentaire) is to teach students to think and speak in the language of the nation (French). The intercourse between the teacher and the students takes place mutually exclusively with the help of writing and phonemics (spoken language). Sign language is strictly prohibited. As soon as the student is accepted into this course, they begin to use the colloquial language used in society ...

The Paris school does not teach the word to all deaf and mute people, but to those students who have already spoken, who have a certain degree of hearing, or who, born deaf and mute, wish to speak, show good talent and good will. 60 of over 200 students have articulation lessons ...

The choice of children who are suitable for the articulation course takes place a few days after the pupils have been admitted to the institution. "

From: "The deaf and dumb in Germany and France", Martin Etcheverry, 1880 quoted from Wolfgang Vater ( Memento from June 5, 2004 in the Internet Archive )

1868 - 1873
Alexander Graham Bell gives speech lessons to deaf-mute children in Edinburgh, studying anatomy and physiology of the human voice until 1870. In 1870 he moved to Canada with his parents, where his father taught. 1871 Bell goes as a deaf and dumb teacher at the Northampton established later "Clarke School" in Massachusetts , USA . Bell then remains on the school's board of directors for the rest of his life and also becomes its chairman for the last five years of his life. Apparently Bell always sees himself primarily as a "deaf-mute teacher" and less as an inventor.

Invited by Gallaudet in 1872, Bell learns sign language and teaches spoken language at the American Asylum in Hartford.

In 1873 Bell took over a professorship for speech technology and voice physiology at Boston University . He becomes one of the most committed advocates of the spoken language- oriented educational principle for the deaf and dumb.

George Veditz , President of the "National Association of the Deaf" later (1907) calls Bell "the enemy whom the American deaf have to fear most".

1876
In a publication called “Organ” 1876, No. 1, p. 7, O. Danger expresses his discomfort in strong words about the “mass gatherings of the deaf and dumb”. What is meant are the annual church days in Hanover and later in Berlin . "So I consider it my duty again this year to point out the mass gatherings of the deaf and mute in Berlin and the dangers that they pose to our current and former students."

1878
A congress on the deaf and dumb is organized as part of the World Exhibition in Paris. Léon Vaisse takes the chair after Etcheverry's refusal, while E. Rigault is vice-president.
27 participants took part in the congress, 23 of them from France, no one from Germany appeared. The following topics are covered:

  • Deaf mute statistics.
  • Causes of numbness. (Ref. Hugentobler.)
  • Psychology of the deaf and mute.
  • The task of the family in raising the deaf and mute.
  • The deaf and mute in elementary school.
  • Union of the two sexes in the same institution.
  • Present state of Tbst. Formation.
  • Causes of the partly unsatisfactory results in Tbst.
  • Teaching methods.
  • Curriculum and timetable. (Ref. Hugentobler.)
  • Deaf teacher education
  • Deaf teacher meetings.

The congress also decides to convene an international deaf-mute teachers congress every three years, the second meeting being held in Como (Italy) as early as 1880.

1876
A.G. Bell tries to develop a "harmonic" telegraph device for the simultaneous transmission of several pieces of information and discovered that instead of impulses, tone sequences can also be transmitted. He cannot repeat this coincidence, but becomes aware of the work of Elisha Gray and Antonio Meucci . On March 10, 1876, just two hours before Gray, Bell filed his own patent application for the later telephone. He benefits from the fact that, under the latest law, he does not have to submit a functioning model, and also that Meucci submitted a preliminary patent application as early as 1871, but was only able to pay the fees until 1874.

1877
Bell founds the Bell Telephone Company together with Thomas Sanders and Gardiner G. Hubbard, including his assistant Thomas Watson .

Two days later, Bell married the deaf daughter Mabel of his business partner Hubbard. He had already taught them to speak and read from their lips beforehand.


- No known events -

1879
Following the Paris World Congress, the first national conference to improve the fate of the deaf and mute takes place in Lyon. Due to the contradiction of statements and recommendations, the French Ministry sends its Inspector General Oscar Claveau and the Mother Superior of the school founded by Pereire in Bordeaux on a tour of 15 spoken language schools. In the final report they recommend the spoken method. The ministry then orders that the school in Bordeaux should be run verbally and that older students who use the sign be separated from the new ones.

Spoken French is the language of instruction in all public schools. The director of Etcheverry at the Paris Institute is replaced by the ear, nose and throat doctor Luis Peyron. This is done against the background that the Paris National Institute continues to give the sign method a priority. In France there are two different methods.

1879
A.G. Bell succeeds in realizing the telephone, which he has currently only formulated as a patent application, in a usable form. This is how the worldwide spread of the telephone begins. Bell, who always pretended to want to promote the pigeons , ironically spreads a system that later became the communication standard in work, business and everyday life, but because it was not usable for pigeons it excluded them and reduced their chances for centuries.

1880

- No known events -

1880
In the meantime there are also attempts at generalization in the Paris National Institute . Martin Etcheverry writes in “The deaf and dumb in Germany and France”, “Sign language is strictly forbidden there [in the Paris Institute]. From the start of this course, the student begins to use the colloquial language used in society [...] The Paris school does not teach the word to all deaf and mute people, but to those who have already spoken, who have a certain degree of hearing , or who, born deaf and dumb, wish to speak, show good talent and good will. 60 of over 200 pupils have articulation lessons [...] The choice of children who are suitable for the articulation course takes place a few days after the pupils have been admitted to the institution. "

1880
Foundation of the "National Association of the Deaf" of the United States

Helen Keller , who later became deaf-blind from an illness , was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia , Alabama . Not least because of the favorable circumstances of her affluent parental home, she successfully coped with her fate. As a writer and public figure, she later achieved world fame.

Events in other countries during the same period

Spain, 1805

In January of this year, the Royal School for the Deaf and Mute opens in Madrid . One of the teachers is the self-deaf artist Roberto Prádez y Gautier (1772–1836).

England, 1890

On July 24th the "British Deaf and Dumb Association" (BDDA, later the British Deaf Association) is founded. It is widely expected that 29 year old deaf Francis Maginn will be elected as the new chairman. Maginn had already sat in with Edward Miner Gallaudet in the USA , was president of the predecessor organization “Royal Deaf-Mute Association” and participant in the International Congress of the Deaf-Mute in Paris in 1889. Instead, however, the 41-year-old hearing Reverend William Bloomefield Sleight is elected chairman.

See also

literature

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