General Information

Serial #

N/A

Part Number

5

Total Parts

6

AKA

N/A

Patents

N/A

General Description

non-ferrous metal

Dimensions

Note: These reflect the general size for storage and are not necessarily representative of the object's true dimensions.

Length

31.1 cm

Width

17.9 cm

Height

N/A

Thickness

N/A

Weight

N/A

Diameter

N/A

Volume

N/A

Lexicon

Group

Printing

Category

Image carriers

Sub-Category

N/A

Manufacturer

AKA

Unknown

Country

Unknown

State/Province

Unknown

City

Unknown

Context

Country

Canada

State/Province

Quebec

Period

Unknown

Canada

A printing plate from a collection used by the les Soeurs de la Charité de Montreal, the Sisters of Charity of Montreal (Soeurs Grises/Grey Nuns). The order was established by Mme Marguerite d'Youville in Montreal in 1737 to serve to poor and sick. The Grey Nuns run hospitals, orphanages, schools, homes for the aged, institutions for the blind, and other social services and works of charity in various parts of Canada and the United States. D'Youville was officially recognized as a Saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 1990. These plates were acquired by les Souers Grises from l'Institut Nazareth, which utilized them for printing the Institut's publications. L'Institut Nazareth is a co-educational school for blind children, founded in 1862 in Montreal by Benjamin-Victor Rousselot and the Grey Nuns. Music was a part of the general curriculum from the outset. The newspapers of the time describe annual concerts which introduced both first-rate performing talents and important new works to the Montreal public and a choir whose reputation led to tours of the province. Many considered the school the earliest conservatory in Montreal. The Institut Nazareth merged with the Institut Louis-Braille in June 1975, continuing thereafter as the Institut Nazareth et Louis-Braille, located in Longueuil, Quebec [Refs. 1-4].

Function

A metal plate used in a printing press to transfer an image to paper, in this case by creating raised dots forming Braille lettering representing Latin abbreviations.

Technical

Examples of Braille embossed printing plates. Braille is a tactile system of raised dots representing letters of the alphabet. To read braille, the fingers gently glide over paper that has been embossed with the braille code. For note taking, a pointed instrument is used to punch out the dots on paper held in a metal slate. The readable raised dots appear on the other side of the paper. Braille has been an effective means of communication for people who are blind since 1829 when it was invented in Paris, France by Louis Braille. Louis Braille lost his sight at the age of three as a result of an eye injury. As a young boy at school, he became frustrated with the large and bulky raised letter alphabet used to learn reading and writing skills. Later in his life, a French artillery officer, Charles Barbier de la Serre, gave him the idea of reading by a tactile code. After many years of experimenting, Louis Braille developed a successful reading and writing system that today is used around the world. The basis of the braille system is known as a braille cell. The cell is comprised of six dots arranged in a grid of two dots horizontally by three dots vertically. The dots are conventionally numbered 1, 2, and 3 from the top of the left column and 4, 5, and 6 from the top of the right column. The presence or absence of dots gives the coding for the symbol. Dot height is approximately 0.02 inches (0.5 mm); the horizontal and vertical spacing between dot centers within a Braille cell is approximately 0.1 inches (2.5 mm); the blank space between dots on adjacent cells is approximately 0.15 inches (3.75 mm) horizontally and 0.2 inches (5.0 mm) vertically. A standard Braille page is 11 inches by 11.5 inches and typically has a maximum of 40 to 43 Braille cells per line and 25 lines. [Refs. 4-6].

Area Notes

Unknown

Details

Markings

raised dots in patterns representing Braille letters

Missing

complete

Finish

grey

Decoration

N/A