Book Celebrates 150 Years of APH
New American Printing House for the Blind History is a Visual Feast
Dec 17, 2008
No institution has done more to augment blind literacy than the American Printing House for the Blind, which, for 150 years, has developed the tools and technology that avail blind and visually impaired people of equal opportunities to read, learn, and lead productive lives.
For its sesquicentennial, APH has issued History in the Making: The Story of the American Printing House for the Blind, 1858-2008, which traces the organization’s timeline from its mission to provide specially formatted books, the innovations it pioneered, through profiles of the people, leaders and line workers, who shaped the organization’s development.
It’s a lavish book whose hundreds of large photographs and illustrations provide a timeless look inside this unique institution, part publisher, part government contractor, and purveyor of the possible.
American Printing House for the Blind Established in 1858
Dempsey Sherrod, a blind Mississippian, obtained a state charter to establish a publishing house and chose centrally located Louisville. In 1858, Kentucky’s General Assembly passed “An Act To Establish The American Printing House For the Blind,” and two years later, APH began as a one-press operation in the basement of the Kentucky School for the Blind.
The 1879 “Act to Promote the Education of the Blind” established a federal quota program to provide funds for schools to purchase embossed books. Administration of this program ensconced APH as the nation’s main provider of educational materials for the blind, a role that became increasingly dynamic in the ensuing decades.
APH’s evolution in the late 19th and 20th centuries, its streamlining of production of braille books and slates, the incremental improvements in large-print publishing, the development of Talking Books, and the invention of many tactile education and daily living aids inspired and now reflects society’s image of blind people as capable contributors, given equal resources.
History in the Making carefully documents each APH triumph, whether the introduction of cardboard tactile maps in 1885, or the launch of Louis, its massive online database of over 200 producers of materials for the blind.
Though a commissioned work (written by former APH museum director Carole Tobe), the book doesn’t shy away from highlighting setbacks, including product recalls, employee strikes (production workers joined the Teamsters in 1981), and funding penalties in the late 1980s for hiring too few disabled workers.
What makes this book so engrossing, however, is its feast of graphics: close-ups of equipment, modern and vintage, shots of 1940s workers at the “collating turntable,” a 1939 promotional display for the braille Reader’s Digest, and an 1879 payroll reproduction showing that John Tierney, a “boy of all work,” earned was paid $16 for four weeks of work.
Renowned graphic artist Julius Friedman designed the book, which features color photography by Geoffrey Carr, reproductions of early tactile pages, and includes an accessible audiobook version on CD read by APH narrator Jack Fox.
It’s a stunning book that belongs in the reception area of every organization that serves the blind.
History in the Making: The Story of the American Printing House for the Blind, 1858-2008, by Carole Brenner Tobe. Louisville: Butler Books; 180 pages, $39.95.
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