[Nfb-history] Nfb-history Digest, Vol 95, Issue 2

Sat May 12 16:02:40 UTC 2018

Peggy and all,

You may already know this, but someone also created a county map of
Minnesota at the school for the Blind with each county carved out of wood.
The map was labeled in braille by small round-headed nails pounded to make
normal braille county names.  A larger round-headed nail was used to
indicate the county seat.  The surface of each county was ground away in
some places to show the location the larger lakes in Minnesota as well as
major rivers.  As a child in the late 50's and 60's, I spent a lot of time
in front of such a map.  It is hard to imagine the time it took to create
such a thing, but such a map meant a lot to some of us who were interested
in geography.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

-----Original Message-----
From: Nfb-history [mailto:nfb-history-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Peggy
Chong via Nfb-history
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2018 10:36 AM
To: nfb-history at nfbnet.org
Cc: Peggy Chong <chongpeggy10 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Nfb-history] Nfb-history Digest, Vol 95, Issue 2

Hello:

This is very interesting.  Teachers at the schools for the blind, across the
country in the early part of the 20th century were making all sorts of maps
in a variety of formats to present geography to the blind students.  In
Minnesota in the 1920's and earlyl 1930's, a teacher at the school for the
blind had a friend at a near-by gas station that gave him paper, pring maps
of the state of Minnesota for free.  The teacher took the print maps back to
the school.  At night, he would sew with the sewing machine along the major
highways, creating thread roads.   Railroad tracks were marked with a
different stitch.  He would draw with other tools at hand for the rivers,
landmarks and such  

The paper maps were fragile and did not last more than a class.  The
geography teacher had to repeat the process over and over again.  What
dedication.  Minnesota did purchase the wooden maps and globes offered for
sale, but they wefre most expensive and could only be purchased with the
help of the community.  Local geography just was not available.  

Through those paper maps, the children learned the railroad routs they would
take on their way back home as well as the road trips they may take back to
the school by way of their parents car.  They learned where their school
mates lived and the routes they took home as well.  

Such local training was most important when the young men, yes, men, would
graduate and begin their own piano tuning or sales business.   Back then, a
blind man often traveled the rails almost daily to reach a small town to
tune a piano for a customer or sell their wares.  If the blind man was to
take a job in a town, he needed to know the geography of the state to be
sure he could get there in time to do the job, or determine where he could
advertise in local papers that he would be passing through, to pick up
additional work to make the trip  more profitable.  

-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2018 6:00 AM
To: nfb-history at nfbnet.org
Subject: Nfb-history Digest, Vol 95, Issue 2

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Today's Topics:

   1. FW: Posts from Fred's Head from APH for 05/11/2018 (rjaquiss)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 11 May 2018 09:40:43 -0600
From: "rjaquiss" <rjaquiss at earthlink.net>
To: <nfb-history at nfbnet.org>
Subject: [Nfb-history] FW: Posts from Fred's Head from APH for
	05/11/2018
Message-ID: <000f01d3e93e$6ce69010$46b3b030$@earthlink.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

From: Fred's Head from APH
[mailto:fredshead=aph.org at mail143.atl221.rsgsv.net] On Behalf Of Fred's Head
from APH
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2018 7:27 AM
To: =?utf-8?Q??=
Subject: Posts from Fred's Head from APH for 05/11/2018

The latest blog posts from Fred's Head from APH, a Blindness Blog. 

<https://us8.campaign-archive.com/?e=60d5a56a21&u=0d9bb2b66f092e599244d8765&
id=dc12785076> View this email in your browser 

 Fred's Head logo
<https://gallery.mailchimp.com/0d9bb2b66f092e599244d8765/images/9c5bcc9c-b7e
a-4148-b696-9bcd691a2dd7.jpg> 

Updates from http://www.fredshead.info/ 

Fred?s Head from APH, a Blindness Blog

In the 05/11/2018 edition:

*	Throw Back Thursday: Relief Puzzle Map

<https://aph.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0d9bb2b66f092e599244d8765&id=
c9590ec69e&e=60d5a56a21> Throw Back Thursday: Relief Puzzle Map

By APH Blogger on May 10, 2018 11:51 am

<https://aph.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0d9bb2b66f092e599244d8765&id=
ecbeb42417&e=60d5a56a21> When my son was little, he loved running his hands
over our relief puzzle maps in the museum.  If you went to a residential
school for the blind in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, you
will remember the large puzzle maps from APH, like this one of
<https://aph.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0d9bb2b66f092e599244d8765&id=
64f5b95b08&e=60d5a56a21> Asia.  They are large, 41 x 43?, and sit on their
own wooden easel.  Each country is a piece to the puzzle, sits in a cutout
in the base, is painted a contrasting color, and has its mountains and
rivers picked out in exaggerated relief.  (If you were large enough to run
your hands over the actual earth, it wouldn?t feel that bumpy?true story!)
Cities are indicated by metal pins.

APH Superintendent Benjamin Huntoon began making wooden relief maps in the
basement of the
<https://aph.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0d9bb2b66f092e599244d8765&id=
962345fcc2&e=60d5a56a21> Kentucky School for the Blind in the 1870s.   By
1921, large hand-carved wooden maps were available with a shellac finish.
APH experimented with molded maps as early as the 1930s.  This style map
appeared in the 1950s and 60s.  They were molded from epoxy in an involved
process.  I guess they fell out of favor when countries started changing
borders faster than APH could change the very expensive molds.  Think about
it, you spend three months carving out a wood casting pattern of Europe, the
wall comes down in Germany, and east and west reunite.  You spend a month
fixing that, and Czechoslovakia breaks up into two countries.  What is a
wood carver to do? 

Caption:  Colorful puzzle map of Asia

<https://aph.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=0d9bb2b66f092e599244d8765&id=
5594952d22&e=60d5a56a21>
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