In 1948 John Bardeen along with his
fellow associates William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain, all
Western Electric scientists invented the transistor. This famous
invention earned Bardeen and his associates the 1956 Nobel Prize for
physics. This marvelous invention became the primary technology
responsible for fueling a revolution in the electronics industry
that continues today.
The transistor had several important
properties that made it a valuable discovery. It was a good
amplifier. It was much more reliable, flexible, smaller in
size, less costly and consumed much less electricity than its vacuum
tube counterpart. After much thought, and in light of
Alexander Graham Bell's dedicated work in the deaf community, Bell
Lab (Western Electric) engineers concluded that the primary market
for the transistor should be the manufacture of smaller,
lighter-weight, more powerful, less expensive hearing aids. At
the time, Western Electric scientists thought this was the best, and
only practical, use for the transistor... or was it?
Clear on the other side of the globe
Akio Morita, the well known and very outspoken chairman of the
Japanese electronic conglomerate, now known as Sony, had other
ideas. His ideas were far from being conventional in the eyes
of Western business people.
Throughout his long tenure, as Chairman
of Sony, Morita-san made something of a career out of criticizing
Western business people. He thought most Western
business people lacked vision and the ability to think
unconventionally about the application of conventional
technology. As it turned out, at least in the case of
the transistor, he was right.
When asked why he spent $25,000 to
purchase the rights to the transistor he said, matter-of-factly, “to
develop a transistor radio, of course.” For some time
Morita-san was the laughing stock of business people around the
globe.
Why bother with trying to make a
transistor radio?" Morita-san was asked. "After all, you are still
going to have to use a very large speaker, not to mention all the
cabinetry."
"We will replace the big speaker with a
little speaker," Morita-san told his critics.
But with a little speaker all of the
people gathered around the radio won’t be able to hear it" his
critics warned him.
But Morita-san stood his ground and
told them, "We will make our radios so small that everyone will have
one to listen to.”
"But radios are far too expensive to
devote to just one person," his engineers told him.
"Then we will manufacture transistor
radios so they are not too expensive for just one person to use at a
time," Morita-san told his critics.
“But there are not enough radio
stations to support such an idea” his critics barked.
“There will be,” he told
them.
Well... the rest is
history. Sony’s motto soon became, "One Person, One
Radio." Morita-san's vision wound up having a profound impact
on making information more accessible to hundreds of millions of
people in every corner of the world. It also made Sony
more profitable than anyone thought possible. Sony went on to
perfect color television in 1968 and under the leadership of
Morita-san became the best-known name in consumer electronic
appliances in the world.
Morita-san’s strength was not
that he was smarter than everyone else. He simply recognized
the benefits of applying technology, originally designed in support
of people with disabilities, to enhance the quality of life and
independence of all societies.
The
transistor was not the only mainstream technology that was
originally developed in support of persons with
disabilities.
The same holds true for the following products:
1808:
Typewriter:
History: Typewriter patents date back to
1713, and the first typewriter proven to have worked was built
by Pellegrino Turri in 1808 for his blind friend Countess
Carolina Fantoni da Fivizzono. He wanted her to be able to
write love letters legibly. |
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Alexander Graham Bell (1847 - 1922):
History: Bell was born into a family
specialising in elocution: both his father and his grandfather
were authorities on the subject, and before long he himself
was teaching people how to speak. Largely family trained and
self-taught, in 1863, at the age of 16, he and his brother
Melville began researching the mechanics of speech. Starting
with the anatomy of the mouth and throat, they sacrificed the
family cat in order to study the vocal chords in more detail.
In 1864 Bell became a resident master in Elgin's
Weston House Academy in Scotland, where he conducted his first
studies in sound and first conceived the idea of transmitting
speech with electricity. His idea was to make a device that
could mimic the human voice and reproduce vowels and
consonants. His father had already spent years classifying
vocal sounds and had developed a shorthand system called
Visible Speech, in which every sound was represented by a
symbol, with the intention of teaching the deaf to speak by
putting these sounds together. |
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1872: Alexander Graham Bell, at age 25, seeks
to make speech visible to people who are deaf.
After spending some time in Boston, lecturing and
demonstrating the Visible Speech system, he chose to settle
there in 1872. He opened his own school to train teachers for
the deaf, edited his pamphlet Visible Speech Pioneer, and
continued to study and teach, becoming professor of vocal
physiology at Boston University in 1873. The idea of
transmitting speech along a wire never left him, and after
considerable research and many false dawns, by 1875 he had
come up with a simple receiver that could turn electricity
into sound.
This focus led to the invention of the
microphone, speaker, telephone, speech recognition, speech
synthesis, stereophonic recording and the transistor [see
below]: |
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1876: Telephone (click photo to
enlarge)
History: A patent for the
telephone (No. 174,465) is issued to Alexander Graham Bell.
The telephone was one of the many devices Bell developed in
support of his work with the deaf. From this early drawing of
the first telephone, sketched out by Alexander Graham Bell, a
new technology that many considered no more than a curious toy
blossomed into one of the most ubiquitous forms of technology
ever conceived. |
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1886:
Computer:
History: It is often said that
necessity is the mother of invention, and this was certainly
true in the case of the American census. Following the
population trends established by previous surveys, it was
estimated that the census of 1890 would be required to handle
data from more than 62 million Americans.
Herman Hollerith, a man with a learning
disability, designed a system that processed information so
that human beings would not have to. He used punched cards to
develop the first computer to process information. This device
was constructed to allow the 1890 census to be tabulated. This
construction meant a great improvement as hand tabulation was
projected to take more than a decade. Twenty-eight years after
Hollerith [1896] founded the Tabulating Machine Company it
becomes known as International Business Machines (IBM).
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1890: Alexander Graham Bell founds Association
for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
History: The Association for the Deaf and
Hard of Hearing is an international membership organization
and resource center on hearing loss and spoken language
approaches and related issues. The association offers members
a wide range of programs and services and provides to all
inquirers information on a vast array of issues pertaining to
hearing loss. The Association's strength is in its diverse,
collaborative membership of parents of children with hearing
loss, educators, adults with hearing loss, and hearing health
professionals. |
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1916: Condenser Microphone:
History: 1916 - E.C. Wente at Bell
Labs developed the condenser microphone to translate
soundwaves into electrical waves that could be transmitted by
the vacuum tube amplifier. His patent 1,333,744 entitled
"Telephone Transmitter" was filed December 20, 1916 and
granted March 16, 1920. The device used two condenser plates,
one of which was a very thin steel diaphragm .002-inch thick,
spaced .001-inch from a large backplate. The condenser
microphone to translate sound waves into electrical waves that
could be transmitted by the vacuum tube amplifier in support
of making hearing aids for children who were deaf.
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1918: Loudspeaker
History: Henry Egerton patented on Jan. 8
the first balanced-armature loudspeaker driver, based on the
1882 balanced armature telephone patent of Thomas Watson, and
used in the Bell Labs No. 540AW speakers developed by N. H.
Ricker Oct. 6, 1922. |
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1926: Moving Coil Speaker
History: In 1926 Wente developed the
moving coil speaker, the Western Electric No. 555 Receiver
(Horn driver) is described in patent 1,707,545 entitled
"Acoustic Device", filed August 4, 1926 and granted April 2,
1929 . . . ." An object of the invention is to receive and
transmit sound with high and uniform efficiency over a wide
frequency range." Wente employed a moving coil/diaphragm
mechanism moving in a strong magnetic field. It was designed
to drive a theater horn and was rushed to the August 6 premier
of Don Juan. The important feature was a conical plug
in front of the diaphragm which shaped the expanding sound
passages from an annular opening at the periphery to a
circular aperture at the exit where an exponential horn was to
be attached. This provided a fairly efficient transfer of
sound from driver to horn with good fidelity at levels
required in the theater. The development of the "555" receiver
is shared with A. L. Thuras who filed on other aspects as
described in patent 1,707,544
with simultaneous dates. |
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1928: Moving Coil, or "Dynamic,"
Microphone
History: Wente and A. C. Thuras developed
a moving coil, or "dynamic," microphone described in patent
No. 1,766,473
entitled "Electrodynamic Device" filed May 5, 1928, and
granted June 24, 1930. Thuras filed patents 1,847,702
and 1,954,966
and 1,964,606
in 1931 and 1932 for commercial models of this
microphone. |
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1932: Stereophonic Recording
History: In March of 1932 several test
recordings were made at the Academy of Music using two
microphones connected to two styli cutting two tracks on the
same wax disk. On March 12 Stokowski recorded his first
binaural disc, Scriabin's "Poem of Fire." This recording is
the earliest example of stereophonic recording that has
survived, although it was not called "stereo" at that time.
Keller had apparently made similar dual recordings in New York
in 1928 but were lost; Alan Blumlein made his "stereo"
recording of Thomas Beecham and the London Philharmonic in
January 1934. |
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1933: Public Stereo Transmission Over
Telephone Lines
History: The first public stereo
transmission over telephone lines of a concert conducted by
Alexander Smallens in Philadelphia to an audience in
Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. on April 27, using a
3-channel system of microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers and
telephone lines. The test was a success , but FM would be used
for high-fidelity music broadcasting, not telephone
lines. |
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1934: 33-1/3 RPM Record
History: The Readophone, an invention
which reproduced literature and music on long-playing discs
was invented. This "Readophone Talking Book", was demonstrated
to Dr. Herbert Putnam, librarian, and to Dr. H.H. B. Meyer,
director, Project, Books for the Blind, Library of Congress,
The Readophone disc had two hours and twenty minutes of
recording time, the equivalent of twenty-eight thousand
words. |
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1935: Book on Tape
History: The American Foundation for the
Blind publishes first issue of Talking Book Bulletin.
|
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1936: Speech Synthesis (click photo to
enlarge)
History: Since its earliest days,
Bell Labs had been concerned with the properties and analysis
of human speech, originally developed to help people who were
deaf learn to speak intelligibly. Because of this work it was
inevitable that a Bell Labs scientist would invent an
artificial talking machine and, in 1936, H.W. Dudley did. It
was the world's first electronic speech synthesizer, and it
required an operator with a keyboard and foot pedals to supply
"prosody" - the pitch, timing, and intensity of speech. Dudley
called his device the "voice coder" though it quickly became
known as, simply, "Voder." It was a hit at the New York and
San Francisco World's Fairs of 1939. |
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1947: Transistor
History: In support of
manufacturing more reliable, smaller and less power-consuming
hearing aids, John Bardeen along with his fellow associates
William B. Shockley and Walter H. Brattain, all Bell Labs
scientists developed the transistor. This famous invention
earned Bardeen and his associates the 1956 Nobel Prize for
physics. Needless to say, this marvelous invention became the
primary technology responsible for fueling a revolution in the
telecommunications industry that continues today. Sony was the
first company in Japan to license the transistor patent from
Bell Laboratories in 1953. At that time, the transistor was
only being used in hearing aids. |
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1948: Tape Recorder
History: National Bureau of Standards
develops specifications for a low-cost reliable talking-book
machine for the blind. |
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1952: Speech Recognition
History: For Bell, whose invention of the
telephone created the telecommunications revolution, the
original goal of easing the isolation of the deaf remained
elusive. His insights into separating the speech signal into
different frequency components and rendering those components
as visible traces were not successfully implemented until
Potter, Kopp, and Green designed the spectrogram and
Dreyfus-Graf developed the steno-sonograph in the late 1940s.
These devices generated interest in the possibility of speech
recognition because they made the invariant features of speech
visible for all to see. |
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1968: Volume Control for the
Telephone
History: Patent Number 3395255.
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1968: Lights from Sound Used by
Entertainers
History:
A loudspeaker is closed by a resilient membrane mounted
across its mouth and at least one reflective surface is
attached to the membrane. The reflective surface receives a
beam of light from a stationary source and reflects a spot of
light onto a screen positioned in front of the resilient
membrane. Sound waves emanating from the speaker cone cause
the resilient membrane and attached reflective surface to
vibrate in response thereto, thereby causing the reflected
light spot to trace visible different patterns on said screen.
These patterns help deaf persons learn to vocalize much sooner
than they would with conventional therapies. Patent Number 3572919.
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1969: Coin Operated Telephone
History:
In a coin telephone facility designed for use by both
physically handicapped persons and the general public, a
vertical wall mounted portion supports a forwardly sloping
shelf portion. For easy access, the telephone handset, the
pushbutton dial and an oversized coin return lever are mounted
on the shelf portion. A mechanism below the shelf operated by
the coin return lever raises refunded coins and delivers them
into a shelf-level receptacle. Patent Number 3598920.
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1971: Voice Activated Telephone
History:
The first voice actuated telephone was developed in
support of persons who are paralyzed. A
telephone-actuating apparatus adapted to be controlled solely
by the voice of a person, and particularly an invalid,
including an electrical control circuit connected to the
receiving and transmitting circuits of an existing telephone
and adapted to actuate the telephone receiver contact switch
element and the dialing mechanism. The control circuit
includes gating, relay and timing elements, adapted to close
the receiver contact switch element by a voice signal during
an initial period and to open the switch element by another
voice signal during a subsequent termination period. The
control circuit also permits actuation of the dialing
mechanism by another voice signal after the termination of the
initial period and prior to the commencement of the
termination period. Patent Number 3612766.
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1971: Text into Speech
History: A system is disclosed for
converting printed text into speech sounds. Text is converted
to alpha-numeric signal data, for example, by a scanner and
dictionary lookup. Syntax of the input information is then
analyzed to determine the proper phrase category, e.g.,
subject, verb, object, etc., of word intervals, and to assign
pause, stress, duration, pitch and intensity values to the
words. From these data a phonetic description of each word is
found in a stored dictionary, modified by the accumulated
data, and used to prepare synthesizer control signals. Patent
Number 3704345.
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1972: E-Mail
History: Vinton Cerf developed the host
level protocols for the ARPANET. ARPANET was the first
large-scale packet network. Cerf, hard-of-hearing since birth,
married a lady who was deaf. Cerf communicated with his wife
via text messaging. According to Cerf, "I have spent, as you
can imagine, a fair chunk of my time trying to persuade people
with hearing impairments to make use of electronic mail
because I found it so powerful myself." Had it not been for
this experience Cerf may not have used text-messaging to the
extent that he did and may not have integrated e-mail as part
of the functionality of ARPANET, the precursor to
Internet. |
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1972: Personal Digital
Assistant
History: The first "Personal Digital
Assistant" was developed in support of enabling persons who
are deaf to send and receive messages through the use a SMALL
hand-held, alphanumeric communications device attached to a
modem and a telephone. Patent Number 3746793. |
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1972: Flatbed Scanner
History: CCD, "Charge Coupled Device"
flatbed scanners, which are ubiquitous today, did not exist
back the early 1970s when Ray Kurzweil and his team at
Kurzweil Computer Products created the Kurzweil Reading
Machine and the first omni-font OCR (Optical Character
Recognition) technology for the blind. The Kurzweil team
created its own scanner using the first CCD integrated chip, a
500 sensor linear array from Fairchild. They did this work in
support of the blind. |
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1972: Vibrating Pager
History: The first vibrating pager was
developed in support of enabling persons who are blind to
receive messages wirelessly. A warning device particularly
useful for the deaf or partially deaf comprising a mechanical
vibration generator responsive to signals produced by a
trigger signal generator to which it is operatively connected,
the trigger signal generator being responsive to various
external sources of different natures, such as an alarm clock,
a door bell or a car horn. Patent Number 3786628.
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1975: Alphanumeric Pager
History: The first alphanumeric pager was
developed in support of enabling persons who are deaf to
receive messages wirelessly. The miniature digital
communicator is a compact communications device intended for
use where conditions are noisy, where no noise at all is
permitted or where privacy is desired. It is a portable device
with a series of alpha-numeric display elements.
Radio-transmitted, digitally formatted data is displayed on
the miniature digital communicator in the form of
alpha-numeric characters which march or ripple across the
display from right to left at an advancing rate of two
characters per second. The entire package is small enough to
be carried on the person, perhaps in a pocket, like the
smallest electronic calculator. Patent Number 4038651.
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1975: High-Speed Reading Displays Used in
Cellphones
History: The first high-speed reading display
was developed in support of enabling children with dysmetric
dyslexia to read. The within method recognizes that although a
dysmetric dyslexic child is unable to properly perform
sequential scanning, he nevertheless is capable of performing
as well as a normal person in static vision exercises, i.e. in
an exercise which requires his identification of stationary
objects of fixed height at specified distances. The within
method thus calls for the presentation of reading material in
letter or word-sized units, one at a time and in reading
sequence, at a fixed location, so that the child reading is
not required to sequentially scan the reading material. That
is, the material is presented in temporal rather than spacial
sequence or relation. As a result, there is only slight or
minimal eye vibration or nystagmus imposed upon the child
which results in minimal ocular overshooting and undershooting
and avoids blurring and scrambling. The manner in which the
reading material is presented thus does not contribute to,
i.e. avoids or minimizes, a failure in the child to properly
focus and perceive the material being presented for reading.
It also makes use of a heretofore unknown compensatory
mechanism existing in dysmetric dyslexic children, namely
functional narrowing of the visual field so as to avoid
blurring. Patent Number 3906644.
Read 600 Words-Per-Minute from a small PDA
display! See: Flashreader |
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1976: Talking Watches
History: The talking timepiece which, in
one form, will have all the same characteristics and
appearance of an ordinary wrist watch, but with the read-out a
spoken tone, which will actually give the time to the nearest
minute, in a voice composed from sufficient information bits
to be reasonably faithful reproduction of either the owner's
voice, or the voice of a person of his selection, this done in
any language with or without extraneous other information.
Patent Number 3998045.
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1978: Telephone Headset
Amplifier
History: The first public telephone amplifier
was developed in support of persons who are hard-of-hearing.
This telephone earphone amplifier is turned on automatically
when the telephone handset is taken off-hook. To this end, the
dc bias provided to the microphone from the telephone line is
used to turn on a semiconductor switch that connects dc power
to the amplifier. The amplifier itself is connected to amplify
the incoming audio, so as to provide greater volume e.g., to
aid persons of impaired hearing. Patent Number 4160122.
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1978: Chiming Wristwatch
History: To enable persons who have
handicapped eyesight to know the time with hearing sensation
by enabling the time to be recognized from a fixed scale or
the number of sound signals. This involves correspondence of
sounds such as Do, Re, Mi, Fa... and numbers 1, 2, 3..., etc.
of the timing in pairs, or 3 numbers of bi, bi, bi, and the
number 3 of the time, wherein if, for example, the
correspondence of Do-0, Re-1, Mi-2...Si-6, Do-7, Re-8, Mi-9 is
provided, 12 o'clock 56 minutes may be known by the order
Mi-Re-La-Si of sound production. Patent Number: JP54153070A2.
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1979: Television Captioning
System
History: Captioning of television
presentations is achieved by transmitting digital data
superimposed on the normal FM sound signal by modulation of an
ultrasonic subcarrier and receiving the digital data at a
viewer's television receiver by picking up the ultrasonic
signal from the television receiver's loudspeaker; the
received digital data being demodulated and applied to the
television receiver as readable alphanumeric captions. Patent
Number 4310854.
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1980: Voice Dictation System
History: To enable a deaf person to have a
conversation with many and unspecified persons by telephone by
analyzing a voice signal from a party-side telephone set in
terms of voice, encoding it into characters, and by displaying
them on a CRT, and by speaking to the party side by using an
ordinary telephone. A voice signal, twhen sent from a
party-side telephone set B, is inputted to the coupler 1 of a
telephone set A for a deaf person through an exchange C. The
coupler 1 sends the voice signal to a voice analyzer 2, which
converts the voice signal into an encoded digital signal and
sends it to a CPU3. This signal is collated with codes stored
in a memory 4 to be encoded into charactes, which are
displayed on a CPU5. The deaf person, when speaking to the
party side, uses a handset 6 as well as ordinary telephone
conversation. Patent Number: JP57055650A2.
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1981: Talking Watches, Calculators and other
Consumer Electronic Devices
History: An audible output device useful in
timepiece or calculator devices, features a prestored and
preselected order of digital codes representing speech words
and pauses, to be outputted through gate circuitry responsive
to the pause codes. Patent Number 4266096.
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1982: Television captioning system
History: Captioning of television
presentations is achieved by transmitting digital data
superimposed on the normal FM sound signal by modulation of an
ultrasonic subcarrier and receiving the digital data at a
viewer's television receiver by picking up the ultrasonic
signal from the television receiver's loudspeaker; the
received digital data being demodulated and applied to the
television receiver as readable alphanumeric captions. Patent
Number 4310854.
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1982: Noise-Canceling
Microphone
History:
A circuit for suppressing background noise of a continuous
nature while enhancing speech signals, or signals having the
transient temporal qualities of speech, includes a signal
multiplier which, in the preferred embodiment, receives the
composite audio signal along with a control signal present
only when the speech component of the audio signal is present.
The control signal may be derived from an AGC circuit having a
slow attack, fast decay characteristic to establish a
quiescent output level from the AGC amplifier in the absence
of speech. An envelope detector is biased to provide a zero
output amplitude in response to the quiescent amplifier output
level. Speech components appearing in the amplifier output
signal are then envelope-detected and filtered to provide the
control signal. Alternatively, the control signal can be
derived by envelope-detecting the audio signal, filtering the
detected signal to remove its d.c. component representing the
continuous noise, and then detecting and filtering again. In
still another embodiment, the control signal acts upon a
constant amplitude instead of the audio input signal in order
to provide a speech-responsive tactile vibration for the deaf.
Patent Number 4461025.
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1982: Auto-Dialer
History:
To attain a call even for blind personnel, by
connecting a paging receiver to an automatic dial adapter and
coupling it to a telephone set to transmit automatically a
calling subscriber number from the paging receiver to the
telephone set. A memory 6 is connected to a reader 12 via a
contact 18, when an informing tone is generated from a
received signal to be selected and the paging receiver 32
storing a calling subscriber number into the memory 6 is
inserted to an opening section 35 of the automatic dial
adapter 33. In coupling a transmitter 19 of a telephone set
hooking up to a coupler 15 of the adapter 33, a switch 7 is
closed and the reader 12 is started by a switch 16. The number
memory read out from the reader 12 with a clock of a timer 11
is converted 13 into a tone dial signal of the calling
subscriber number, amplified and transmitted from the
transmitter 19 to an exchange via the coupler 15. Patent
Number JP59066234A2. |
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1983: Screen Magnification
History: An adapter apparatus which is
connected between an image generator and a display device. The
image generator generates image signals representing an
unmodified image to be displayed. The adapted stores the
generated image signals and forms transformed image signals
representing a portion of the unmodified image. An output
device receives the transformed image signals and provides a
transformed image for human sensing. The transformed image can
be a magnified image, a tactile image or a speech image.
Patent Number 4644339.
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1984: Talking Electronic
timepiece
History: A timepiece has a time set mode
and another time-related mode. It comprises a logic circuit
for recognizing the time set mode and an electroacoustic
transducer responsive to the logic circuit for providing a
particular sound in succession when the timepiece is in the
time set mode. The present timepiece makes it easy for the
user, especially a blind or weak-eyed person, to recognize
that the time set mode is in effect. Patent Number 4448542.
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1984: Talking Multimeter
History: An instrument for indicating
variations in an ambient condition, such as temperature,
atmospheric pressure or weather wherein such indications are
given by means of synthetic speech. Control signals generated
by the memory comparator are employed to selectively activate
a speech synthesizer generating selected synthetic speech
signals which are fed to a digital-to-analog converter and the
analog signals generated thereby are transduced to speech
sounds in a speaker. In one form, the instrument is supported
in a hand held housing containing electronic circuits and a
sensor for sensing temperature as well as a battery, controls,
on-off switch, display, speaker and synthetic speech signal
generator. In another form, the sensor is supported at the end
of a tubular housing to be inserted into a body cavity or the
mouth for sensing body temperature and generating signals
indicative thereof which signals are transmitted to electronic
circuit means via flexible cable to a hand held or table top
supported unit containing such other elements. Temperature is
both displayed and indicated with sounds of speech. Patent
Number 4428685.
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1984: Musical Keyboard
History: The first music keyboard, with
accoustic sound, was developed by Ray Kurzweil. The
inspiration for having done this came, in part from a
conversation he had with Stevie Wonder, who had been a user of
the Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind! |
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1989: Talking Thermometer
History: The ornamental design for a combined
talking calendar and thermometer, as shown. Patent Number D304342.
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1993: Talking caller ID
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1995: Talking Building Signs
History: An interior building sign for
assisting sighted and visually impaired or blind persons to
locate an escape route from point A to point B includes a
first planar sheet printed in a first color with a floor plan
corresponding to a building floor on which the sign is to be
posted. The floor plan is also printed with two dimensional
marks in a contrasting color indicating a route from point A
to point B. A second planar sheet of substantially transparent
material overlies the first planar sheet, the second planar
sheet having three dimensional marks machined or routed
thereon in substantially overlying relationship with the two
dimensional marks to thereby provide a tactile representation
of the route. Signs of similar construction have application
in non-emergency situations and in other environments
including, for example, convention centers, parks and the
like. Patent Number 5438781.
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1996: Video Searching
History: Abstract: A television presentation
and editing system uses closed captioning text to locate items
of interest. A closed captioning decoder extracts a closed
captioning digital text stream from a television signal. A
viewer specifies one or more keywords to be used as search
parameters. A digital processor executing a control program
scans the closed captioning digital text stream for words or
phrases matching the search parameters. The corresponding
segment of the television broadcast may then be displayed,
edited or saved. In one mode of operation, the television
presentation system may be used to scan one or more television
channels unattended, and save items which may be of interest
to the viewer. In another mode of operation, the system may be
used to assist editing previously stored video by quickly
locating segments of interest. Patent Number 5481296.
See:
http://www.ideal-group.org/autism/Radio_and_Television_Programs.htm
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1997: Talking ATM machines
History: Systems which comprise (a) an
automatic teller machine which includes a plurality of
customer interfaces such as a bank card reader, a banking
record dispenser, a cash dispenser, and a receptacle for
receiving bank deposits; (b) infrared remote communication
emitters and (c) individual short range infrared communication
emitters located in the teller machine. The emitters (b) are
adapted to provide repeating, directionally sensitive
frequency modulated message signals identifying the direction
to and location of the teller machine. Thus a person having a
portable receiver for such signals is led to the machine and
is enabled to position himself/herself in front of the machine
in order to operate it. The respective emitters of (c) provide
a separate repeating, directionally sensitive frequency
modulated message signal which at least identifies the
location of the respective customer interfaces on the teller
machine so that by movement of the portable receiver in front
of the machine, the location on the teller machine of the
respective customer interfaces can be determined. Feedback
concerning the transactions can also be provided from the
system to the customer through the portable receiver. Patent
Number 5616901.
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1998: Talking Glucose
machine
History: A device for reading the labeled
contents of an insulin container and then providing an audible
message informing the user of the labeled contents. The device
includes a recessed surface, such as a cylindrical well, into
which an insulin container is insertable by a vision impaired
person. An optical scanner or reader reads a code furnished as
part of the labeling on the inserted insulin container. A
microcomputer compares the read code to known code patterns
and a speech output is generated as to the type of insulin
within the container. The speech output is broadcast over a
speaker so as to be audible to a listener. The device may be
integrated into a blood glucose sensor, or furnished in a unit
that may assemble to an existing blood glucose sensor. Patent
Number 5786584.
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1999: Heads-up Glasses
History: Abstract: A wearable display device
displays a sequence of words into the field of view of a
person wearing the device in order to communicate information
to the person, such as captions for hearing-impaired persons
or translations of speech spoken by another person. Various
embodiments of the device include an eyeglass frame configured
to be worn by the person, a housing mounted to the eyeglass
frame, including a circuit for receiving a signal containing
the sequence of words, a display for displaying the sequence
of words received by the circuit, a mirror mounted to reflect
the displayed sequence of words downwardly through the
housing, and a lens disposed in the path of the mirror to
magnify the displayed sequence of words downwardly reflected
by the mirror, and a partially reflective beam splitter,
mounted to the housing and extending downwardly over an eye of
the person, for receiving the downwardly reflected sequence of
words and projecting them into the field of view of the
person. The display itself may be moved along a recess in the
housing to focus the words onto the beam splitter. A curved
beam splitter may be used instead of a lens to magnify the
words and provide optical correction. Patent Number 6005536.
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2000: Talking ATM
History: An automatic bank teller machine
(ATM) that uses a combination of simple visual cues,
large-type visual displays, audio, and a touch-sensitive
display screen to facilitate use of the ATM by the blind and
visually impaired, while still being useful for the sighted.
In particular, the ATM uses a touch-sensitive display screen
that has a fixed, easy to locate touch scanning zone. The
display screen operates by contacting the screen, with a
fingertip, for example, and sliding to a location on the touch
scanning zone corresponding to an item to be input, such as
one of the numbers 0 to 9, for example. Patent Number 6061666.
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2001: Talking ATM
History: Systems which comprise an automated
transaction machine which includes one or more customer
interacting means such as, in the case of an integrated
circuit card terminal, at least an integrated circuit card
reader; infrared communication emitters and individual short
range infrared communication emitters located in the machine.
The emitters are adapted to provide repeating, directionally
sensitive frequency modulated message signals identifying the
direction to and location of the machine. Thus, a person
having a portable receiver for such signals is led to the
machine and is able to position himself/herself in front of
the machine in order to operate it. The respective emitters
provide separate repeating, directionally sensitive frequency
modulated message signal which identifies the location of the
respective customer interface on the machine so that by
movement of the portable receiver in front of the machine, the
location on the machine of the respective customer interfaces
can be determined. Instructions on use and/or feedback
concerning transactions can also be provided from the system
to the customer through the portable receiver. The signal
transmitters may also be adapted for highly efficient use in
the presence of a wide range of levels of ambient light
energy, e.g., sunlight. Patent Number 6186396.
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