BLIND YOUTHS GO SIGHT-SEEING

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 30, 6 January 1939, Page 3

BLIND YOUTHS GO SIGHT-SEEING

Happy Party Of Afflicted Boys Shown Over _ Studios OF 1LYA

Tae visitors were youths from the Institute for the Blind, Pacnell and were in charge of Major George W. Bowes, well-known Auckland bandmaster and bandmaster of the Institute’s fine band. Most of them were members of the band. They ‘‘felt’’ their way around and made their acquaintance with everything by touch. Although the fittinss-in fact everything were described fully to them, this seemed to be unnecessary. For instance the sightiess ones showed an uncanny faculty for sensing the size of the different rooms and studios by reverberation of the voices, or by the noise made by others who walked across the floors.

One boy was much interested in the tympani, another in the texture of the sound-proofing material of the walls; others closely examined microphones and other equipment. To the average person the idea, of showing blind people around a radio station might seem rather like love’s labour lost. Wot so with these visitors.