Book Cover, An Introduction to the Cooper-Hewitt Museum [braille]

These 53 leaves of pressed Braille enable the visually impaired to learn about the three exhibits that were presented at the Cooper-Hewitt in 1990. Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a French man who went blind following a childhood accident. At the age of 15, Braille developed and published his code for the French alphabet in 1824, subsequently including musical notation in 1829. The second revision, published in 1837 was the first digital form of writing. Braille characters are small rectangular blocks called cells that contain tiny palpable bumps called raised dots. The number and arrangement of these dots distinguish one character from another. Since the various braille alphabets originated as transcription codes of printed writing systems, the mappings (sets of character designations) vary from language to language. In addition to language and music, there are also braille codes for mathematics and computers.