#blissymbols

Rachel Zimmerman painting by Rob Schamberger Ink and watercolor on 9" x 12" watercolor paper The latest addition to the 'She Changed the World' collection! Rachel Zimmerman (born 1972) at the age of twelve invented a device that gave those unable to easily communicate the power of communication. In 1984 for a science project in London, Ontario Rachel developed a software program using Blissymbols, allowing those with severe physical disabilities such as cerebral palsy to simply use a touchpad of symbols that convey their thoughts, and the program then sends that to a printer that will output those thoughts into written English or French. The project then went on to win a silver medal at the Canada-wide World Exhibition of Young Inventors in 1985 and the YTV Television Youth Achievement Award. Rachel earned a BA in physics from Brandeis University in 1995 and a master's degree in Space Science from the International Space University in France in 1998. She has spent her career working for NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, the Planetary Society and the California Institute of Technology. From 2013 to 2016 Rachel was the president of the Science Education for Students with Disabilities, and has worked throughout her career to tailor NASA innovations to aid people with disabilities. #rachelzimmerman #shechangedtheworld #stem #blissymbols

First: a perfect moment. On day 86 of a 3-month trek to and from the South Pole, adventurer Aleksander Gamme discovered something he'd stashed under the ice at the start of his trip. He wasn't expecting such a rush of happiness in that cold, hungry instant, but he hit the bliss jackpot. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page to watch the video.) But what if you're after something a little bigger than just a moment of happiness? Producer Tim Howard brings us the incredible and tragic story of Charles Bliss -- the man that inspired this show. As ...

I really don't have much else... just wanted to share?

Blissymbols (or "semantography"): invented by Charles K. Bliss (1897–1985), born Karl Kasiel Blitz, a Jew living in a climate of fierce anti-Semitism in the Austro-Hungarian city of Czernowitz, which was home to a mixture of different nationalities that “hated each other, mainly because they spoke and thought in different languages.” Originally a chemical engineer, Blitz was placed in concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald during World War II, and finally emigrated to first Great Britain (where he changed his name from Karl Blitz to Charles Bliss, to avoid association with German air raids) and later Shanghai, where he became fascinated with the Chinese system of writing using symbols. Bliss believed that the root of human conflict was the insufficiency of language to convey ideas. The aim of his system was to establish a series of symbols that could be understood immediately by all, regardless of language, and be simple enough to be easily reproduced by printing machines and typewriters.

Blissymbols or Blissymbolics were conceived of as an ideographic writing system consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts. Blissymbols differ from most of the world's major writing systems in that the characters do not correspond at all to the sounds of any spoken language. In this it is like other similar constructed languages such as Zlango, Isotype, or Characteristica universalis. (via sleevia)