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Overcoming Challenges - People Who Made A Difference
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Does the word “syllabary” ring a bell? Are you
familiar with the name Sequoya? Well, syllabary was an alphabet of
symbols invented by an enterprising person, Sequoya, who braved a
handicap to contribute something to the society that supported him.
Louis Braille is probably more familiar to you as the person who
invented a writing system for the blind, setting aside his own
grief.
Who were the first
natives to read and write their language?
The Cherokees, a native tribe in Tennessee were the first natives to
read and write their own language. The feat was possible thanks
largely to Sequoyah, born in a Cherokee village in 1775. Tragedy
struck young Sequoya, when he lost the use of one his legs.
Initially shattered, Sequoya soon decided to devote his energies to
drawing and painting. He used this medium as a powerful medium of
expression. Gradually, he began to get interested in communication
as a science. He was initially fascinated with the way European
settlers used written words. He, therefore decided to devise a
written system of communication for his people. He toiled for years
and fought discouragement and frustration, before he finally
invented an alphabet of systems known as syllabary. He soon began to
be involved in teaching his entire tribe to read and write their
native language using the system of syllabary. |
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Raised dots
Braille is a system of writing for the visually handicapped,
using raised dots. A fifteen-year-old boy Louis Braille invented
it. Louis was a born a normal healthy child in the year 1809, in
France. When he was three years old, fate dealt a cruel blow in
the form of an accident wherein he punctured one of his eyes.
The eye became infected and before long, he lost eyesight in the
other eye too. He was enrolled in a special school for the
visually handicapped. When he was thirteen years old, he learnt
about a system called “night writing”, which was a special
system for the blind. Louis found the system too cumbersome. The
experience triggered in him a desire to invent a system, which
would enable the blind to read. After two years, he invented the
system of raised dots, which became very popular. Soon the
system came to be accepted and it was named after the
inventor. Using a maximum of five dots, Louis assigned certain
number of dots arranged in a particular way to the twenty-six
alphabets in the English language. |
Louis Braille |
Slow and early
Thomas Alva Edison, the American inventor who has patented
nearly one thousand two hundred inventions, had to overcome
difficulty of a different kind. Born in Ohio in 1847, schooling was
a painful experience for Edison who was labeled a slow learner. His
formal schooling lasted a very short while and soon his parents had
to withdraw him from school. However, his parents had immense faith
and they took it upon themselves to educate him. By the time he was
ten years old, Edison was conducting scientific experiments. His
several contributions to the field of communications and technology,
the most important being the phonograph and the electric bulb, have
aided human progress tremendously.
The never say die spirit helped these three
people not only to overcome their handicap but also contribute
significantly to society and mankind.
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