The magazine, published in Braille from to , was a monthly circular of general-interest articles sent through the mail free of charge by special provision of the United States Congress to every blind and vision-impaired person in the United States and Canada who could read Braille. The publication was the brainchild and devotion of the heiress Electa Matilda Ziegler, the mother of a blind son and the widow of the industrialist and Arctic expedition financier William Ziegler.