Braille Library

The Braille Library

In our days is a natural thing that blind children learn to read, write and count with Braille system in a special school which is established for them. These things are belong to our life, however this is not was at all times in this way.

250 years before people kept that blind ones cannot be formed

V. Haüy, was the first who founded an institute for the blind ones 200 years ago. Students learned history, literature, music, plaiting, bindings, and locksmith work here. In the school Haüy and his colleagues had educate their students to reading of convex Latin letters and plane writing with help of a ruler. Writing learning brought only few successes.

The printed letters written in a suitable format into a wax disk have come readable for unseeing ones. So Haüy furnished a press because of the necessary multiplication, and he mentioned of a library for blind people. This reading method spread in time and it was in use too for a long time after frame Braille system.

The creator of Braille script, Louis Braille was born in 1809. He became blind as a child in an accident. He learned in the Institute of Paris when he was a teacher after. The fact that writing is a natural thing for everyone who can see, but it is a problem for blind ones made him sad. Although they learned write letters but those were unreadable or difficultly readable. That’s why it was necessary  to create a new, handier and many ways better writing system.

Charles Barbier’s night writing gave the idea and the basic for this writing system, used even now. Barbier was a soldier officer who made up a cryptogram for seeing peoples which can read in a fog. The main point of this system is a 6×6 fields square. In this square Barbier put the 36 letters of French alphabet. He numbered the lines horizontally and vertically so all letter was a two-digit number. He pierced the numbers into the paper with an auger.

Braille borrowed from the basic idea the embossing but he created a character script instead of this code writing. 6 points make a character and these points are located in a little cell which is 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. Sizes of points are always equal and intensity are irrelevant from explanation.

The system was born in 1825. The exposition of Braille was published in 1829. The writing style has spread in time. It was produced in Hungary as the general writing system of blind ones in 1893.

In our days useable Hungarian system is from Lajos Mihályik. Right letters of any languages give the same caracters. Accentuated and two digit letters have some extra sign in the alphabet.

Nowadays it is naturally that we – blind people – can earn our knowledge from books. They tell us about history, nations, humans, beauty of far countries and many other things. During reading we not only earn some experience but we also “see” touch the letters, buy this our spelling is progress and our dictionary became better.

The Braille Library has opened for us in Budapest in 1896. It works in our days too and wait for the readers. In course of time Braille books get old and wear out. Change and copy for these are continuous but it is not an easy part. In the collection of library are 900 work which are in 8500 volume. Sizes of points are unchangeable so Braille books are larges. In this time only press machines or computer printers can print double-page books however deposit copies are copied with hand tools. So an A/4 page in plane writing is about 1,5 page in Braille.

Accounts of difficult turning out are made 10-12 books annually. There are 5 people who transcribe books into Braille. Tracing is happens with typewriter or Braille board. A not blind person dictates the text and says also all punctuation marks and paragraphs. Their works do yeoman service for readers. It used to make books in the press but machines are old and overworked. Braille newspapers are made there now.

The future is the computer printing. It would have to some high powered computers and Braille printers but they are incredibly expensive.

Library has 198 registered readers. A member reads 6-12 work on the average annually. Maybe it not seems to be much. To account for this here are some important data: An ordinary Braille book have 75-80 pages. This is about 27-30 page in plane writing so a common book’s size are 10-15 volume. Readers read 7482 volumes in 1998. In country living people get books by post while citizens who live in Budapest go into the library for reading matter.

Some example for size of books:

István Fekete – Thorn Castle - 10 volumes.
Mór Jókai – The Golden Man - 21 volumes.  
Alexandre Dumas – The Count of Monte Cristo - 59 volumes.

In the last time reading of Braille books came in the background. There are several reasons of this. Books are very heavy. It is a problem for elder ones to take out more volumes. There is another serious problem; people who go to blind later can learn to write perfectly but they can read difficultly or no way.

The audio-library was established in 1961. It contains works read on cassettes. From the 90’s reading by computer spread more and more. A speaker system read the scanned text by character recognizer software. However in our reader’s opinion is that the own read book represents more inward experiences.

We hope you are interested in our work and we can meet in our library.

Opening hours:
Tuesday and Thursday  10:00-18:00
Friday:  8:30-12:00