NEW DEVICE WILL HELP BLIND TO READ

Taupo Times, Volume XIV, Issue 61, 5 August 1965, Page 5

NEW DEVICE WILL HELP BLIND TO READ

Scientists have developed a device that will allow the blind to read conventional newspapers, magazines and books.

The tiny electronic gadget scans the letteirs of words and transmits signals to the blind person's fingertips. It eliminate® the need for special Braille characters. Ano'ther new device, the size of a flashlight, detects objects in the path of a blind person and sounds an alarm or triggers a warning in the hand. Scieintists at Stanf'ord University, California, have been perfecting and testing both aids. Professor John Linvill, of Stanford University, father of a 12-year-old daughter who has been blind since infancy, suggested the idea that made the electronic reader workable. The research team already had devised the optical probe that would pass oveir the printed material but was puzzled as to how it could relay its signals to the reader. Professor Linvill suggested an array of crystals^ that would be placed under the fingertips of the blind person. As tho scanner passed over a particular letter on the printed page an electric charge would vibrate the crystals in a pattern corresponding to that letter. One researcheir said: "It's something like a modern scoreboard. There, each letter is made up of tiny lights. Our system uses vibrating crystals instead." Professor Linvill' s daughter, Candy, was recruited to test the invention and after only 90 minutes' practice,

was reading her seventh grade reader at five words a minute. After twenty-one-and-a-half hour sessions she was reading more than 20 words a minute. The Stanford scientists said this might sound slow to a person with normal vision but for the blind it was sensational. They said they hoped that with further practice and reifinements to the equipment the reading rate would increase. The new system might, one day, be used to help the blind to read music and involved mathematical problems. The co-director of the projects, Professor James Bliss, said the "objeet detector" operated like a camera, on reflected light. "The blind person clasps the device in his hand. It is connected to a small power plant that clips to a belt." He said it detected objects in a space wide enough for a person to walk through. Its effective range from the walker could be selected to vary from three to eight feet. ® TAUPO HEALTH Stamp saies yesterday totalled £411/6/2, compared with £364 on the first day last year. This increase was due in main to the efforts of Taupo Jaycee, says the acting postmaster, Mr G. Patchett.