User:AlphaLemur/Minnie Crabb

Minnie Crabb (1885-1974) was the inventor of the Crabb-Hulme Braille printing press, the first Australian braille printing press. Her work was instrumental in braille accessibility and production in Australia.

Crabbe was the librarian of the Braille Library in South Yarra (later to become known as Vision Australia Foundation) for 37 years and an assistant-secretary of the Victorian Association of Braille Writers, retiring in March 1944. It was during this time that she invented what was believed to be the only braille printing press in the Southern Hemisphere.

image: Royal Victorian institute for the Blind Chief Librarian Minne Crabb, using a the Crabb-Hulme printing press in 1934 https://visionaustralia.org/carols/news/2021-03-18/raise-women-who-revolutionised-braille-accessibility-victoria

Career
Crabb began her career in braille immediately after leaving school. She was involved with the Braille Library in South Yarra since its early years. The Library was then operated in small private rooms, with limited books and equipment, from the home of her aunt, May Harrison. Harrison was one of the founding members of the Braille Library in South Yarra, along with Tilly Aston in 1894 (later to become known as Vision Australia Foundation), acting as its first secretary. Prior to its establishment, braille was unavailable in Victoria.

Initially Crabb was an assistant to her aunt, then assistant librarian and assistant secretary for the Victorian Association of Braille Writers, taking over as chief librarian and secretary when her aunt died in 1912. Crabb built a team of over 100 volunteer transcribers to ensure that braille literature could be freely borrowed by readers from all over Australia.

In 1934 Crabbe, in partnership with Mr. H. Hulme of the Sentinel Engineering Works, invented a braille printing press (a form of Braille embosser) for the vision impaired. The machine expanded the possibilities for rapidly delivering information to Australian Braille readers when the cost of importing a printing machine was impractical due to high costs. The Library's catalogues, newsletters and monthly magazine (The Social Letter) could now be rapidly produced and duplicated instead of each catalogue and copy of the monthly Braille magazine being written separately. The only machine of its kind in the world, it was of steel and cast iron construction with two wheels on left hand side and two foot levers to operate a wheel on the right hand side. It was described in one newspaper as being "worked with foot pedals and a handle similar to a sewing machine, whilst the paper is guided by a folder and an arrangement of clips enables both sides of the paper to be printed". It also revolutionised the production of braille at the time by not only allowing for mass duplication when hand printing was the norm, but printing on both sides of a page. This greatly reducing storage and production costs.

The machine was publically demonstrated in 1934 at the Housewives’ Exhibition in the Melbourne Town Hall as part of an exhibition of Australian inventions and labor-saving devices. The press remained in use until the 1970s. It is now on display at the Vision Australia head office in Kooyong, Victoria, after having been restored to full working order in in 2001.

In February 1937 Hobart, Tasmania, the National Health and Medical Research Council held an Australian conference of representatives of Blind Institutions, the first of its kind in since 1920. At this conference Crabb advocated for the prevention of blindness in the home, school, and factories,as well as the rights for low vision people to have the same access to higher education opportunities as sighted people. She was particulaly passionate about careers for low vision people in music, broadcasting, lecturing and industrial education.

By the time of Crabb's retirement in 1944 the library had grown to become the third-largest Braille library in the world and the only public free lending library for the blind in Victoria. It was estimated to have more than 16,000 books in the collection, with over 15,200 volumes actively circulating on loan throughout the Commonwealth in 1944 alone.

Literary Works
Crabb, Minnie H & Victorian Association of Braille Writers. 1924, Braille text book : ''a simple system of embossing books for the blind. Grade 2'' / by Minnie H. Crabb. Victorian Association of Braille Writers, Melbourne

Recognition
Crabb is recognised for her contributions on the Australia Braile Authority's Australian Braile Honour Roll.