Writer James Hatley Frere (1779–1866) was interested in education and around 1838 he developed a tactile or stenographic type system for teaching the blind to read. Frere developed this system using feedback from “a very clever blind man” who suggested several important changes. Frere’s system was developed before the Braille system was introduced to the UK. Frere was one of many alternative systems to the Braille system, which did not become the near-universal tactile system of teaching the blind to read until the late 1800s.