-tested
methods of doing things in domestic, scientific, and business circles,
and the time has passed when startling propositions to accomplish this
or that by the assistance of electricity are dismissed with incredulous
smiles. This being the case, no surprise need follow the announcement of
a device to facilitate the imparting of instruction to deaf children
which calls into requisition some service from electricity.

The sense of touch is the direct medium contemplated, and it is intended
to convey, with accuracy and rapidity, messages from the operator (the
teacher) to the whole class simultaneously by electrical
transmission.[1]

[Footnote 1: By the same means two deaf-mutes, miles apart, might
converse with each other, and the greatest difficulty in the way of a
deaf-mute becoming a telegraph operator, that of receiving messages,
would be removed. The latter possibilities are incidentally mentioned
merely as of scientific interest, and not because of their immediate
practical value. The first mentioned use to which the device may be
applied is the one considered by the writer as possibly of practical
value, the consideration of which suggested the appliance to him.]

An alphabet is formed upon the palm of the left hand and the inner side
of the fingers, as shown by the accompanying cut, which, to those
becoming familiar with it, requires but a touch upon a certain point of
the hand to indicate a certain letter of the alphabet.

A rapid succession of touches upon various points of the hand is all
that is necessary in spelling a sentence. The left hand is the one upon
which the imaginary alphabet is formed, merely to leave the right hand
free to operate without change of position when two persons only are
conversing face to face.

The formation of the alphabet here figured is on the same principle as
one invented by George Dalgarno, a Scottish schoolmaster, in the year
1680, a cut of which maybe seen on page 19 of vol. ix. of the _Annals_,
accompanying the reprint of a work entitled "_Didascalocophus_."
Dalgarno's idea could only have been an alphabet to be used in
conversation between two persons _tete a tete_, and--except to a limited
extent in the Horace Mann School and in Professor Bell's teaching--has
not come into service in the instruction of deaf-mutes or as a means of
conversation. There seems to have been no special design or system in
the arrangement of the alphabet into groups of letters oftenest