The Book Of Psalms, Translated Out Of The Original Tongues, & with the former translations diligently compared & revised by [Printing for the Blind] [Bible - Psalms] - 1867

New York: American Bible Society, 1867. 3/4 cloth. Very Good +. 12 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches. Folio. [1] + [872] – 974 leaves. Printed in raised letters for the blind. Tears to upper margin of front endpapers and, edges lightly soiled. Bound in contemporary 3/4 black leather and black cloth which is worn at edges. A scarce early American edition of its kind. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, several decades before the widespread adoption of Braille, printers and educators in France and Britain began developing a variety of tactile reading systems for the visually impaired, making independent reading among the blind possible for the first time in history. The results of an important competition at the Royal Society of Arts in Edinburgh in 1832 inspired the American activist, Samuel Gridley Howe, to research and develop his own embossed reading system for the blind, which emerged in 1835 as "Boston Line Type." Drawing upon the methods of James Gall, an entrant in the Edinburgh competition, Howe created an alphabet of angular raised roman letters that "was said to be far less bulky and therefore less expensive than contemporary European roman-letter systems" (PRINTING HISTORY, p. 20). With the aid of a $1000 grant from the American Bible Society, Howe purchased the first printing press for the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind (today, the Perkins School for the Blind) and produced the country's first complete raised-letter Bible for the American Bible Society in 1842. The present Book of Psalms appears to have been printed with the first complete Howe-ABS Bible, retaining the pagination of that production, and was published separately with a new title page. ABS had published Selections of Psalms in 1835, and the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind a Psalms and Hymns in 1840 and 1848, this is a very early edition of the Psalms. A rare work. Elizabeth M. Harris, IN TOUCH: PRINTING AND WRITING FOR THE BLIND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (Smithsonian, 1981). Elizabeth M. Harris, "Inventing Printing for the Blind," PRINTING HISTORY, Vol. VIII, No. 2 (American Printing History Association, 1986), pp. 15-25. "The First Books Embossed in the U.S. for Blind Readers, 1833-1880," compiled by the Callahan Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind. Bible Resource Center, "Translation through Multimedia