Joel West Smith

Background

He was born on September 17, 1837 in East Hampton, Connecticut, United States, to Delia Elliot (West) Smith, a minister's daughter, and John William Burke Smith, a farmer.

Education

Joel was educated in the public schools and at a local academy of East Hampton. Later he entered the Perkins Institution for the Blind, he learned piano tuning.

Career

Having a bent for business, he became postmaster and manager of the village store.

At the age of twenty-four, while celebrating the Fourth of July, he was blinded for life. In 1866 he became instructor of piano tuning at the Perkins Institution for the Blind. In 1872 he was called to London to open a department of tuning in the new Royal Normal College for the Blind. After three years he returned to Perkins, where he so built up his department that he secured and held for it the yearly contract of keeping in tune and repair the pianos of the Boston public schools.

For four years he edited, published, and largely financed the Mentor, 1891-94. In 1894 he left Massachusetts permanently for his native East Hampton, where he owned property and where he voted. He served repeatedly on church and village improvement committees, was one of the prominent men of his town, and became a trustee of the Connecticut School for the Blind.

His death occurred at Middletown, Connecticut.

Achievements

• Joel West Smithworked out such devices for the use of the blind as tangible maps and improved writing appliances, one of which was a machine for typewriting in Braille letters. His scientific revision of Braille's alphabet, known as American Braille, received worldwide recognition. He also edited Mentor, the first magazine published in the United States for the blind.

Personality

He was an ingenious mechanic, a public-spirited citizen.

His geniality and humor made people forget that he was blind, and at Perkins he was counselor and popular leader. He had, however, a mercurial temperament, his periods of depression becoming pronounced as distressing disabilities came upon him.

Connections

Father:

John William Burke Smith

Mother:

Delia Elliot (West) Smith