After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1825, John Dix Fisher studied for a couple of years in France, where he was impressed with the way the French educated blind children. Fisher came home to the United States and incorporated what became the Perkins School for the Blind, with educator Samuel Gridley Howe, on this date in 1829. The school opened its doors to its first six students three years later. Perkins, named for Thomas Perkins who donated the land for the school, was the first school exclusively for the blind. Today, the school is known as the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind, and is located in Watertown, MA.

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