Braille production has made tremendous strides over the past five decades. When Lutheran Braille Workers was in its infancy, our German braille books and Bible correspondence lessons were individually brailled by hand using a slate and stylus. The stylus is a pointed implement used to emboss dots on paper placed into a slate, which serves as a template for the lines of braille. Because the dots are embossed from the back of the paper, the characters have to be punched backwards and from right to left. Then when the paper is turned around, the dots are in the right order for reading. This method is still used worldwide for correspondence, but is very inconvenient for making books.

In 1945 Lutheran Braille Workers obtained its first braille writer. These machines are somewhat similar to typewriters, with keys for spaces, backspaces, line returns, and one key for each of the six dots of the braille cell. The braille letters are embossed by typing in the proper combinations of dots. Braille writers greatly improved the quality of the braille books, and the speed with which they were produced. Perkins Braillers, manufactured by Howe Press, are still in use today by some transcribers for producing book proofs, correspondence and small quantities of publications.

Zinc-plate technology came to Lutheran Braille Workers in 1947, providing another advancement in the production of braille by LBW. Long metal plates are folded in half, to about the size of a sheet of paper. Initially the dots were embossed on the plates with a stereotype, an electric apparatus with a braille-writer keyboard that punched the dots onto the plates by activating solenoids. This method had further benefits, as both sides of a plate could be embossed simply by turning the plate around, off-setting the mechanism slightly and typing in the characters. This cut paper usage in half and reduced the size of the books. The master plates for braille Bibles in Amharic (Ethiopian) and some other languages are still produced on a stereotype by devoted LBW transcriber Gertrude Epperson in Wichita, KS.

A sheet of special braille paper is inserted between the plate halves, and the plate is placed into an aluminum jacket lined with rubber. The jacket is run through a roller press, which embosses the dots onto the sheet of paper. LBW's first roller presses were actually washing-machine wringers operated with electric motors. This same principle, with additional safety precautions, is still used today.

The Publication Process Today

Through the courtesy of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod's Ministry to the Blind, LBW now utilizes a PED-30 Plate Embossing Device for plate production. The PED, manufactured by Enabling Technologies, operates much like a laser printer in that it receives and processes data from a computer terminal. The PED is capable of embossing 40 or more plates an hour, another significant boon to the ministry. The LBW Home Office in Yucaipa, CA uses a smaller paper embosser, the Enabling Technologies Romeo RB-40, to produce correspondence and paper copies of book masters for proofreading.

Whenever possible, LBW obtains the manuscripts for the material we produce on computer disk. The manuscripts are then converted into the braille format using specialized computer programs. The Duxbury Braille Conversion Program, created by Duxbury Systems, converts word-processing files (Word Perfect or ASCII/DOS Texts) into Grade 1 or Grade 2 braille. Pokadot, distributed by the National Braille Association, is also used for conversion of ASCII texts into braille. When manuscripts are not available on disk, many of our transcribers use Pokadot, MegaDots or Micro Engineering's Micro Braille to type the braille characters into the computer, using six-key input. With the help of Dr. Don Rogers at Bexhill Braille Bibles (Sussex, UK) LBW has developed several computer programs to convert foreign language texts on disk into the proper braille codes for those languages.

All manuscripts are checked for proper format at the Yucaipa office, then sent to proofreaders worldwide. The braille division of United Bible Societies in Stuttgart, Germany grants copyright permission for all Bible translations and assists in locating proofreaders for foreign languages. After a multi-step proofing and review process, the final manuscript plates are embossed at Work Center #112 in Rialto, CA. The plates are then sent to one of about 200 work centers in the U.S. and Canada for production. The books are collated, assembled and mailed out by our corps of 7000 volunteers. In 1994 close to half a million braille publications were produced by Lutheran Braille Workers.

Our large-print publications are mastered at the Yucaipa office, and produced either there or at Work Center #8 in Detroit, MI. Mastering was formerly done using large-print typewriters. Today LBW produces large-print masters by computer, using a specially designed 18-point font developed by Bill Mathews of San Bernardino, CA. The book pages are mass-produced on industrial strength copiers: a Xerox 9500 in Detroit, a brand-new Xerox 5090 in Yucaipa. The pages, covers and bindings are then sent to various work centers for collation, assembly and distribution. The LBW Large Print Department produced over 52,000 books, pamphlets and tracts in 1994.

All year long LBW receives requests for braille and large-print material in new languages. We are currently producing Bible books in English (NIV), Amharic, Latvian, Estonian, French, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, Spanish, five Philippine dialects and many others. Projects under consideration or development include Bibles in Romanian, Thai and some languages of India. There are an estimated 52 million blind and visually impaired people in the world, a tremendous ministry field for organizations like Lutheran Braille Workers.

All product names mentioned are trademarks of their respective manufacturers.

Bexhill Braille Bibles, 11 Salvington Crescent, Bexhill-On-Sea, E. Sussex TN39 3NP U.K.
Duxbury Systems Inc., 435 King St. / P.O. Box 1504, Littleton, MA 01460
Enabling Technologies, 3102 S.E. Jay St., Stuart, FL 33497
Howe Press, c/o Perkins School for the Blind, 175 N. Beacon St., Watertown, MA 02172
Raised Dots Computing, 408 S. Baldwin St., Madison, WI 53703
Micro Engineering, 5714 Skyloft Dr., Riverside, CA 92509-5569
National Braille Association, 3 Townline Circle, Rochester, NY 14623-2513
United Bible Societies, Braille Division, Balinger Strasse 31, 70567 Stuttgart, Germany

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