Wood's apparatus for the blind, for embossing on Lucas's system.

British educator Thomas M. Lucas (c.1764 - 18 May 1838) developed the Lucas Type (or Lucas System) in 1830. The Lucas system was a tactile alphabet system designed to help blind people, especially children, learn to read by feeling the embossed text, based on shorthand and phonetic principles. The Lucas system was developed before the Braille system was introduced in the UK.

The Lucas System was not widely used or especially successful because the symbols chosen had little relationship with their Roman alphabet letter and so could not be easily read by sighted people.