James Gall

James Gall was an Edinburgh publisher, educational writer, and campaigner for reading among blind people. Sources available during this search identify him as the founder of the Edinburgh Blind School and as the creator of an embossed angular or "triangular" alphabet for blind readers. He is also associated with the publishing firm that later became Gall & Inglis.

His best-known surviving work is A Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Literature for the Blind (1834), a substantial book on the education of blind readers that also includes practical guidance for teaching reading and writing. Other source material suggests he was active in religious publishing as well, and that he spent decades shaping educational and charitable work in Edinburgh.

There is one detail I could not cleanly resolve from the sources: one archive summary gives his death as 1872, while several other sources describe him as dying in 1874. Because of that conflict, it is safest to say only that he died in the 1870s unless a more authoritative record is checked.