Robert Charles Moon

Robert Charles Moon (1844 to 1914) was a British-born American ophthalmologist and publisher who devoted part of his career to readers who are blind. Born in Brighton, England, he was the son of William Moon, who lost his sight to scarlet fever as a child and devised Moon type, a tactile alphabet that lets blind people read by touch. Robert helped his father translate the system into several languages and prepare geographical and astronomical maps in it. From 1866 to 1878 he practiced medicine at the South London Ophthalmic Hospital, a facility founded in 1857 by Dr John Zachariah Laurence, and with Laurence he characterized the condition later named Laurence-Moon syndrome, marked by hypogonadism, intellectual disability, pigmentary retinopathy and spastic paraplegia. He emigrated to the United States in 1879, graduated from Jefferson Medical College and worked as an ophthalmologist, and he established the Moon Press for the Blind to publish books and charts in Moon type. He died in 1914.