Word: abbe
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Dates: during 1930-1930
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Last week at Buffalo 2,000 members of the National Association of the Deaf met to unveil a bronze and marble statue of Charles-Michel, Abbé de 1'Epée (1712-89), the man who codified the existing hand signs of his day, invented new ones and created the first intelligible means of communication for the deaf. He was a Roman Catholic priest, canon of the Cathedral of Troyes, son of Louis XIV's architect...
...church deprived him of his ecclesiastical functions because he was a Pansenist.* The Abbé developed his sign system in order to teach his two deaf sisters to communicate. His finger alphabet is still in use. Eugene E. Hannan, deaf sculptor of the Buffalo statue, reproduced the Epée alphabet on to the statue's base. Modeling the expressive fists was the hardest part of his work, said he last week. The statue itself represents the Abbe studying his clenched right hand for its possibilities in signs...