José Mario Fallotico

José Mario Fallótico (San Vicente, Santa Fe, or Buenos Aires, October 10, 1897 - Buenos Aires, June 7, 1962) was an Argentine political activist, whom some sources Journalists attribute the creation of the white cane for the blind.

Biography

Some sources place his birth in the town of San Vicente, Santa Fe, where he spent his childhood; Others maintain that he was born in Buenos Aires and at the beginning of the century he moved to said Santa Fe town along with his father, who was a pharmacist, and the rest of his family.

Since his youth he participated in the Unión Cívica Radical, the Argentine political party that fought for a law of universal suffrage, in which he held various positions. From the 1920s he lived in Buenos Aires. In 1962 he died of cardiac arrest.

The white cane for the blind

According to some publications, on June 22, 1931 (1921, according to others) Fallótico helped a blind man cross the street and wondered how to recognize a person with that disability. He then had the idea of creating a white cane that would allow them to be identified: he offered his invention to the Argentine Library for the Blind (institution created in 1924) whose president Agustín C. Reduffo adopted it. Soon, the white cane became a universal symbol for people affected by blindness. It should be noted that the only references to this matter come from Argentine journalistic media; the invention is generally attributed to the Englishman James Biggs.