Description

This Stainsby-Wayne Brailler was once used at the Royal School for the Blind, Wavertree. It is one of the earliest forms of Braille writer, invented in the 1880s, and revolutionised how Braille was written. It is pictured with a black carrying case and an instruction booklet.

The Brailler was designed to be portable and has its own carrying case. A Stainsby Braille writing kit was made up of three main parts. The Braille writer itself is a long slim rectangular device with six chrome keys and a bell, and it comes with a metal board to attach the Braille writer to, and a metal hinged Braille paper clamp. The bell would ring to show that there were only seven spaces left on a page. To use the Stainsby Brailler, you had to type from right to left, meaning that the person using it had to write backwards to be able to read the Braille correctly.

It was the first Braille writing machine to be introduced to the general public, meaning it could be used both at work and at home. The Stainsby Brailler opened up new opportunities for people with sight loss, making learning and writing Braille easier than ever before.

Community curation:

Steve Binns, Liverpool city historian, remembers the Stainsby Brailler he used at the Royal School for the Blind as a child in an interview for History of Place, which is held by the Museum of Liverpool's Liverpool Voices Archive:

“They didn’t know this, but the reason the Stainsby my parents bought me was so cheap, was because it was a reverse Stainsby. So 4, 5 and 6 were on the left of the space bar, and 1, 2 and 3 were on the right. I know that sounds complicated, but what it meant was, everything I had to learn, I had to unlearn and learn again when I got one of these Perkins Braille machines!”