The True Method of Educating the Deaf…
by Charles-Michel
de l'Épée
First published 1784
This work is nothing other than a better-known (second)
edition of work of Charles-Michel de l'Épée’s which came out in 1776 under the
title 'Institution des Sourds et Muets, par la voie des Signes méthodiques' and
completely sold out. Charles Michel de l' Épée 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. 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.