Optophone

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Optophone in detail.jpg

With the Optophone , which was developed by the French Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe , the development of electronic reading systems for the blind began .

history

Fournier d'Albe

Fournier introduced a device in 1912, he called it Optophone, with which blind people could find light sources. This device had good press, but there was criticism from the blind for having more fundamental problems than finding light sources and windows. Thereupon Fournier presented a further developed Optophone in England in 1913. Photosensors now detected black writing, and the device converted these into acoustic signals that the blind person could then interpret. In the beginning, the blind could only read three words per minute with the device. Later, an optical instrument company, Barr and Stout Ltd., further developed the device and made it a commercial product.

Raoul Hausmann

In 1922 the Dadaist Raoul Hausmann published in the trilingual magazine "Вещь - Objet - Objekt" published by Ilja Ehrenburg and El Lissitzky , a text about an optophone that should be able to convert light into sound and vice versa with the help of photosensors. But he didn't have enough money to build it.

On September 25, 1934, Raoul Hausmann and Daniel Broido registered another Optophone for an English patent. The patent was officially registered on April 27, 1936. It must have been a photoelectric-based calculating machine. Hausmann later sold his patent to Broido in order to be able to pay for his escape from the Nazis.

The Bataille Optophone

From 1957 Fournier took up the old Optophone idea again. The Bataille Optophone came out. The basis of the (albeit limited) success was that more emphasis was placed on training than on technical development. In addition, it didn't make as much background noise and you could read a little faster (if you moved the written material by hand: 19 (English) words / minute, if you used it with a mechanical aid: 38 words / minute). In evaluating these speeds, one has to take into account that the only alternative for the blind at the time was the sighted reading assistant.

Web links

Commons : Optophone  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bruce Elder: Harmony and dissent: film and avant-gard art movements in the early twentieth century , Wilfried Laurie University Press 2008, p. 64.
  2. ↑ Kaori Nagai: Tis optophone which ontophanes . race, the modern and the Irish revivalism. In: Len Platt (Ed.): Modernism and Race. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2011, p. 70.
  3. ↑ Jacques Donguy: Machine Head : Raoul Hausmann and the optophone. Leonardo 34 (2001) 3, p. 217.
  4. ↑ Peter Weibel: Beyond Art : A Third Culture. A Comparative Study in Cultures Art and Science in 20th Century Austria and Hungary. Vienna: Springer 2005, p. 83
  5. ^ Eugene F. Murphy: Evaluation of certain reading aids for the blind . In: Evaluation of Sensory Aids for the Visually Handicapped. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences 1972, p. 41.

literature

  • The blind may now "hear" light. Popular Mechanics Oct. 1912, p. 521
  • Jacques Donguy: Machine Head : Raoul Hausmann and the Optophone. Leonardo 34 (2001) 3, 217-220
  • Printing made audible for the blind. Popular Science Nov. 1923, p. 40
  • Haskins Laboratories: Research on reading machines for the blind : A Progress Report on work done at Haskins Laboratories New York City. Haskin Laboratories 1947, pp. V-15 ff.