William Moon
William Moon (born December 18, 1818 in Horsmonden , † October 9, 1894 in Brighton ) was the developer of the Moonalphabets , a Braille competing Braille , which is based on the letters of the black script.
Live and act
William Moon was a healthy, sighted child until he contracted scarlet fever . As a result of this disease, he became completely blind in one eye and had severely reduced eyesight in the second eye, which worsened over time. Despite several operations, his eyesight deteriorated more and more. In 1840, at the age of 21, Moon became completely blind and moved to Brighton , East Sussex with his widowed mother and sister .
Invention of the moon alphabet
- Main article: Moon alphabet
Moon taught local blind boys to read through relief scripts developed by various people (Alston, Frere, Gall, and Lucas). As he did so, he noticed that the boys were having a hard time learning these scriptures. Therefore, in 1843, he began to develop his own relief alphabet, which he published in 1845 - the Moon alphabet . Here the individual letters were structured in such a way that they almost retained the outlines of the Latin letters. The boys learned to read faster with this method.
Since it was important to him that blind people should be able to read complete books through their sense of touch, the first publications in the Moon Braille began to appear in 1847. The only disadvantage here was that the printing was very time-consuming. The moon script was spread through missionaries over India, China, Egypt, Australia to West Africa.
In 1842 Moon married Mary Ann Caudle, the daughter of a surgeon. Their son Robert was born in 1844 and their daughter Adelaide a year later. Although the family lived in poor conditions, Moon was able to purchase a wooden printing press with which he could print and reproduce his writings.
Since William Moon was raised very Christian, it was very important to him to translate the Bible in moon script. It took almost ten years to make this a reality. In this work William Moon was financially and energetically supported by Sir Charles Lowther , who had suffered the same fate as Moon - he too went blind after scarlet fever. Sir Charles Lowther became a good friend of Moon. With Lowther's help, he was able to set up a print shop and library right next to his house and thus publish his writings. During his lifetime books were printed there in 471 different languages - he supplied almost the whole world with his writings, so to speak.
Commitment to supporting blind people
William Moon had very advanced views on education for the blind . Groups of interested people hired a teacher for the blind who had been trained by him, who taught them the moon script and provided them with books, among other things with the aim of enabling blind children to take part in general school lessons. Moon also got involved with his non-seeing contemporaries through various social projects and was therefore called "the pastor of the blind" .
Almost at the same time as William Moon, Louis Braille (1809–1852) had dealt with how people with blindness could still be enabled to read and write. By 1839 he had managed to develop a typeface that reproduces Latin letters in the form of a point system - raphigraphy. Since it was easier with this system to produce printed matter and to create their own writing for the blind, this writing was taught in French schools for the blind from 1850. It was only introduced in Germany in 1879.
Honors
The University of Philadelphia awarded him an honorary doctorate in law in 1871.
Web links
Individual evidence
- Jump up ↑ Kumur B. Selim, William Moon, Encyclopaedia Britannica, in: http://www.bridica.com/biography/William-Moon
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Moon, William |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Developer of the Braille Moon Alphabet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 18, 1818 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Horsmonden |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 9, 1894 |
| Place of death | Brighton |