Charles-Michel de l'Épée b. 1712
Charles Michel de l' Épée founded the first public school
for the hearing-impaired in France, and created a systematic method of teaching
them. He has become known as the inventor of sign language but he initially
learned to sign from the deaf community of Paris. Acknowledging that they
already had a visual language expressing needs, desires, doubts, pains, and so
on, Épée looked for the shortest and easiest method of gesturing expression. At
a time of much prejudice against the hard of hearing Epee founded his school
and funded it with his modest inheritance, wishing to ‘make every effort to
bring about their release from these shadows.’ He devoted his life to
developing the world's first sign alphabet - based on the principle that ‘the
education of deaf mutes must teach them through the eye of what other people
acquire through the ear’ - and began a General Dictionary of Signs
(Dictionnaire général des signes), which was completed by his successor Abbé
Sicard, whilst one of his deaf pupils, Laurent Clerc, went on to co-found the
first school for the deaf in North America paving the way for modern American
Sign Language, including the signs of the ASL alphabet.
Read La veritable maniere d'instruire les sourds et
muets, confirmee par une longue experience (The True Method of Educating the
Deaf, Confirmed by Much Experience) (1784)