Blind tooling

“ In order to make the blinds or awnings sufficiently secure where they are of large dimensions, it is very usual for the owner or occupier of the premises to which the blind or awning is to be attached, to seek and obtain the consent of the local authority to fix iron sockets in the kerb of the footpath into which iron or wood standards are inserted for the purpose of supporting the outer part of the blind or awning, and there [185] can be no objection to this practice provided that the work is efficiently performed and to the satisfaction of the town surveyor. ”

“ A blind piano tuner asks for work from house to house, just as a sighted tuner has to do, but, whereas we sometimes employ the latter, we refuse the former, saying, we could not trust our instrument to the hands of a blind man, and maybe we offer him a small piece of silver to lessen the hurt we have unwittingly inflicted. Perhaps a man with defective eyesight asks to clean house or help in the garden, or work on a ranch, or perform some light task in a store. ”

“ We should endeavour, then, to educate our senses, for their capabilities are great. As the blind man acquires a touch surpassing our experience, so should we strive to develope these half expanded powers. I have often thought that John Hunter owed much of his great fame to the manual skill he gained as a cabinet maker in his early life.
We should bear in mind that, although the skill of the optician gained for us a new realm, outside the range of unaided vision, when he constructed the microscope, yet to see aright the eye must have a special training. ”

“ When the adult is able to read and write once more, perhaps to use the typewriter, he feels encouraged, and begins to ask what other blind men are doing, and to wonder what avenues of usefulness still remain open to him. Whenever practicable, I induce the men to resume their former occupations, or suggest other lines of work suited to their altered condition. One young man who was an electrical engineer before his blindness, now wires houses in Los Angeles, his work always passing the inspector, despite the opposition of sighted competitors. ”

“ Cunning men have made machinery so accurate that you marvel at them; but there was never a machine with the accuracy of the human hand when it is trained as we train it. Monsieur, I could scratch a line on the door behind you with a needle, and with my eyes closed set a knife point into every twist and turn of it. Why, monsieur, there was a straw clinging to Blackford's coat—a straw that had fallen on him as he passed some horse stall. I marked it as he came up through the crowd, and I split it with the knife. ”

“ When the other organs of sense fail it comes to their rescue--the blind man reads with his hand and the dumb man speaks with it. Being an active organ it gives expression to man's capabilities: Put a sword into it and it will fight, a plow and it will till, a harp and it will play, a brush and it will paint.
The invention of every machine conceives its first principles in the structure of the human hand; and every working part of that machine bears a relation in its function to a corresponding part in the mechanism of the hand. ”

“ One of the best known slogans, and one carrying conviction, is "You can see through glass goggles, but you can't see through glass eyes."
Many trades and occupations have their well-recognized types of injury. In the bottling works eyes are frequently lost through the impact of popping corks. The bursting of unprotected water gauges caused many cases of blindness yearly among engineers and machinists. In the grinding trades eyes are frequently lost by bits of flying emery becoming imbedded in the eyeball, and the Industrial Accident Commission recommends iron or glass guards for emery wheels. ”

“ The mental educator came first, the mental control without wearing electrodes came long afterwards."
"Understandable," nodded Carroll easily. "Men learned to communicate along a wire long before they used radio."
"The gadget we've been using is none other than a person-to-person telepathy aid. It was first developed as a means of placing men en rapport while studying a complex problem. Thus, for instance, a machinist can do a job for an electrical project while understanding perfectly just why this must or must not be done despite its mechanical desirability. ”

“ Braille paper, magnetic tapes and cassettes for the production of Braille and talking books; aid for improving the mobility of the blind, such as electronic orientation and obstacle detection appliances and white canes; technical aids for the education, rehabilitation, vocational training employment of the blind, such as Braille watches, Braille typewriters, teaching and learning aids, games and other instruments specifically adapted for the use of the blind. ”

“ Brush-making, first introduced by Bessie and taught by Farrow, had proved a successful and remunerative occupation for the blind. Encouraged by this success, the making of bass brooms was now added to the work carried on in the Euston Road. The coarse fibre used for this purpose has to be dipped in boiling pitch, and then inserted and fixed into holes in the wooden back of the broom. By an ingenious contrivance of the teacher, the hand of the blind man follows a little bridge across the boiling pitch, reaches a guide, at which he stops and dips his bristles into the shallow pan. ”

“ The machine is designed for rapid writing, and is also capable of being used by the blind. The work is done by means of a series of keys, moved by the fingers something in the same way as the keys of a concertina, each key leaving the impress of its proper letter or character on the paper below when it is struck by the finger. ”

“ The parts that are to be gilt must be glaired, but as the glaire will show its presence, or, more strictly speaking, leave rather a dirty mark, the tools should first be worked in blind, and the glaire laid on carefully up to their outer edge. When dry, lay the gold on and work the tool in. Let the tools be only moderately warm; if too hot they will go through to the mill-board, leaving their mark as if they had been cut out with a knife. ”

“ A blind man may touch the keys of an instrument with unerring precision, may model the fastest boat, may discover and invent, calculate and construct, may do still greater wonders—but all the blind men who have done such things have descended from those who had seeing eyes. ”

“ Whether one or two set-screws are used, the boring tool may be forged from a single bar of octagon steel, which can be seated in a piece like that shown at e in Fig. 610, which is grooved so as to receive and hold the tool. As is well known, boring tools are the most troublesome both to forge and to adjust in the lathe, and, as the result, a light tool is often used because no other is at hand and it is costly to make a new one. ”

“ They learn to do everything, from tightening a wire to putting a new one in, and hundreds of testimonials from those who have employed blind tuners speak for the thoroughness with which they do their work. ”

“ The merits of the invention being generally admitted, there was a considerable demand for the locks, and the necessity thus arose for inventing a series of original machine-tools to enable them to be manufactured in sufficient quantities to meet the demand. It is probable, indeed, that, but for the contrivance of such tools, the lock could never have come in to general use, as the skill of hand-workmen, no matter how experienced, could not have been relied upon for turning out the article with that degree of accuracy and finish in all the parts which was indispensable for its proper action. ”

“ Sense of touch makes it possible for him to perceive which line he is plugging in on, and it is said that he makes fewer mistakes than are made by the usual full-visioned operator.
The blind operator takes much interest in his work and is constantly striving to improve his service. ”

“ It is too frequently the case, that the eyes of mules that are worked in the Government's service are injured by the blinds being allowed to work too close to the eyes. This is caused by the blind-stay being too tight, or perhaps not split far enough up between the eyes and ears. This stay should always be split high enough up to allow the blinds to stand at least one inch and a half from the eye. ”

“ Look at those brain-wave recordings, Fred. They're getting the same stimulus. We can give a thousand bottleheads this stimulus with the flicker, and get identical responses. But not the blind boys. We can't successfully bip a blind boy. The brain-waves are radically different and we've never figured out a way of codifying them. A blind bastard's never seen anything. The seeing eyes are trackers, like radar. But a blind boy takes in reality and records it and keeps it in a different way. ”

“ It may thus readily be seen that it is the little bar of metal from which the small tool is made that needs our care and attention.
This is particularly true of the expensive milling machines, where the little saw, if not in perfect order, and not properly set, will not only do improper work, but injure the machine itself.p. 27 More lathes are ruined from using badly ground tools than from any other cause.
In the whole line of tools which the machinist must take care of daily, there is nothing as important as the lathe cutting-tool, and the knowledge which goes with it to use the proper one. ”

“ Many of these work automatically—that is, they engage and disengage themselves; setting to work only when they are fed with material, and, when their rodent-like teeth have gnawed away as much metal as is requisite, they stop of their own accord. The effect of this is so extraordinary, that it almost seems as if those bright limbs of iron, which stop and move on without human agency, must be directed by some sort of metallic brain. The most common form of tool employed is what is termed the circular cutter or milling-tool, which is constructed to fit every class of work. ”

“ She saw that much more would be done for the blind in a shop or factory, where they would find the requisite material, often bulky as well as costly, and the requisite appliances. These could not be provided in the single room of a blind man with a wife and family. There was also a daily increasing demand amongst the blind, not for charity but for work. ”

“ And the increasing shortage of labor will induce employers throughout the country to see the light, and realize that what the blind operative loses because of lack of sight, he makes up by increased concentration and faithfulness to duty. ”

“ Those called must quickly exchange places (on pain of a forfeit it they do not) , the one blinded trying to catch them on their way. The caller must make them change places often, and from distant sides of the room, so as to give the blinder a good chance. If he catches any one in the act of changing his place, and calls his name correctly, the person so caught must take the part of blind-man until, in turn, he catches somebody else. ”

“ Even where actual blindness does not exist, the powers of vision are singularly defective, and when it became necessary for the railway, in selecting its servants, to test their sight, it was found that a very small minority of the candidates could distinguish a red signal from a green one at a distance of a hundred yards. ”

“ Blocking in blind, both on leather and cloth, should not be attempted upon articles which have become very dry. A good plan is to store them in a cellar the night before and to bring out only as many as can be finished in the next half-hour's work. Blocking in blind can only be done on matt or grained material, as its effect is nil upon a smooth polished surface. ”

“ They are small, blind craft, groping their way perilously when below the surface, the steel and electrical machinery sadly interfering with any trustworthy working of their compass, and the best form of periscope hitherto introduced forming a very imperfect substitute for ordinary vision. ”

“ There can be no doubt upon the mind of any mechanic or engineer, thoroughly acquainted with practical working in metals, that a good deal of what has been brought forward and affirmed, both by safe-makers and by burglars themselves (turned approvers) , as to the wonderfully-ingenious devices resorted to by the latter, by which, if we were to believe it all, nothing in the shape of steel or iron can possibly withstand ultimately the redoubtable powers of these people, is simply fiction—imaginary ingenuity utterly impracticable if tried. ”

“ And even this labour has now been got rid of; for, by an arrangement of the gearing, the slide itself has been made self-acting, and advances with the revolution of the work in the lathe, which thus supplies the place of the workman's hand. The accuracy of the turning done by this beautiful yet simple arrangement is as mechanically perfect as work can be. The pair of steel fingers which hold the cutting tool firmly in their grasp never tire, and it moves along the metal to be cut with an accuracy and precision which the human hand, however skilled, could never equal. ”

“ The tool, so hard that a journey through many miles of steel has no appreciable effect on its edge, shears its way remorselessly over the surface which presently may be tempered to a toughness resembling its own. If you want to resharpen the tool, it will be no good to attack it with any known metal. But somewhere in the works there is a machine whose buzzing emery-wheels are more than a match for it, and rapidly grind the blunted edge into its former shape, so that it is ready to flay another plate, one skin at a time. ”