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7 unusual facts about Samuel Gridley Howe


American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission

Stanton appointed Samuel Gridley Howe, James McKaye, and Robert Dale Owen as commissioners, all three of whom served from the creation of the committee in 1863 through to their submission of its final report in May 1864.

Boston line letter

Boston line letter was a tactile writing system created by Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe in 1835, a popular precursor to the now-standardized Braille.

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the first director of the New England Asylum for the Blind (now Perkins School for the Blind), studied tactile printing systems in Europe and developed his own system of raised type called Boston line letter.

Samuel Gridley Howe

Dr. Howe himself was the originator of many improvements in method as well as in the process of printing books in Braille.

The first occurred in 1850, when Dr. Howe along with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore Parker and other abolitionists, stormed Faneuil Hall in order to try to free a captured escaped slave, Anthony Burns.

Samuel Howe

Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–1876), American physician, abolitionist and advocate of education for the blind

Tactile alphabet

Samuel Gridley Howe's Boston Line using lowercase angular letters, influenced by Gall's system but more closely resembling standard Roman letters



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