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St. Augustine tells early Christians that deaf children are a sign of God's anger at the sins of their parents. Meanwhile, Benedictine monks take vows of silence to better honor God. To communicate necessary information, they develop their own form of sign language.
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The philosopher Aristotle claims that "Deaf people could not be educated [since] without hearing, people could not learn."
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The physician Geronimo Cardano of Padua, Italy, attempts to teach his deaf son using a code of symbols. Pedro Ponce de Leon, a Benedictine monk, successfully teaches speech to people deaf since birth.
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uan Pablo Bonet, an advocate of early sign language, writes the first well-known book of manual alphabetic signs for the deaf in 1620.
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A French priest, Charles Michel De L'Eppe, establishes the first free public school for the deaf in France. De L'Eppe tries to develop a bridge between the deaf and hearing worlds through a system of standardized signs and finger spelling.
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Charles Michel De L’Eppe publishes a dictionary of French sign language.
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Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, an American interested in deaf education, travels to Europe where he meets the Archbishop Roche Sicard, the author of "Theory of Signs,” and successor to De L’Eppe. Sicard sends one of his instructors, Laurent Clerc, and the pair found the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.
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The Enabling Act is signed by President Abraham Lincoln and Gallaudet College Opens. Originally known as the National College for the Deaf and Dumb, it is the only accredited facility for the Deaf in the United States to offer college degrees.
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In 1872, he opens a school in Boston that concentrates on oral methods of instruction for teachers of the deaf. A period of upheaval in deaf education begins with a backlash against sign language.
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While early hearing aids are not easy to use (most weigh several pounds and must be placed on a desk), the carbon-based microphones, powered by large three-and six-volt batteries, give hearing-impaired people truly amplified sound for the first time.
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President Dwight Eisenhower signs PL 85-905 establishing Captioned films for the Deaf.
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Stokoe publishes his findings about sign language as a legitimate language. In 1965 a Dictionary of ASL on Linguistic Principles is published.
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Robert Weitbrecht, who is deaf, invents the teletypewriter (TTY), which enables deaf people to use phone lines to call each other and type out their conversations.
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Congress issues the Babbidge Report on oral deaf education and concludes that it has been a "dismal failure."
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The Caption Center at WGBH in Boston open captions "The French Chef" the country's first nationally broadcast captioned program.
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On November 29th President Ford signs PL 94-142 into law. The law guarantees each disabled child to receive a free, appropriate public education.
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Robin Michelson and Melvin Bartz first invented cochlear implants in 1960, and they were finally approved for clinical trials in people 18 and older in 1985. The device is a mechanical prosthesis of sorts for the inner ear. It bypasses the bones of the inner ear, placing electrodes directly into the cochlea, where sound waves are absorbed and interpreted by the auditory nerve.
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President George H.W Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act into Law, protecting the right of the disabled to education, employment, accessible buildings, and other reasonable accommodations. The law requires greater communications, education, and employment opportunities for the Deaf.