During the Great Exhibition of 1851 her parents learnt that a Frenchman was showing a writing frame of his invention, and that by means of it the blind could write unaided. The inventor, M. Foucault, was invited to Queen Anne Street. Bessie learnt to use the frame, and soon found that it made her independent of supervision and assistance. She could write and address a letter herself; and here at last she stood in one respect on an equal footing with those around her. She used in later years to date from the time she had the Foucault frame. A medal was awarded to the inventor, but owing to some mistake it was not sent to him. Bessie was instrumental in procuring and having it forwarded to a man whom she looked upon as her benefactor. Her friendship with Miss Isabella Law, which lasted throughout her life, was inaugurated over the Foucault frame. A correspondence was carried on between them with regard to it, and Miss Law, blind daughter of the Vicar of Northrepps, who was preparing a volume of poetry for the press, found it very helpful, and at the same time found a dear and valued friend. Another use which Bessie made of the frame was to write, in 1851, to a young blind man named William Hanks Levy, of whom she had heard at the St. John's Wood School for the Blind. He was an assistant teacher there, and in 1852 married the matron of the girls' school, with whom Mrs. Gilbert had corresponded in Bessie's childhood, and who had sent embossed books to Oxford. Levy did all the printing for the St. John's Wood School, and Bessie wanted an explanation of the Lucas system in use there. She could read every kind of embossed printing, and when she heard of any new system, always inquired into it. She knew at this time the triangular Edinburgh in which the first books she possessed were printed, Moon, Braille, the American, and several shorthand types. She could read Roman capitals and the mixed large and small hands. She always considered the Edinburgh type the simplest; but when she found how many adults lose their sight, and how slowly their sense of touch is developed, whilst in some it is not developed at all, she thought that, on the whole, it might be best to use Roman capitals for the blind, that this would offer greater facility than any other system for those who had previously learnt to read, and would present no greater difficulty to those born blind. She made no effort for the advancement of her view on this subject, and in later years always advocated the use of Moon's type for those who lose sight as adults.