Telecommunications for the Deaf: Echoes of the Past—A Glimpse of the Future

Special Issu: Telecommunications for the Deaf Echoes of the Past— a Glimpse of the Future Carl J. Jensema ore than 100 years ago Alexander Graham Bell, a teacher of the deaf, invented the telephone . It was a simple device, but one that created more problems for hearing-impaired people than Dr. Bell ever dreamed possible. Hearing-impaired people just now are gaining full access to the telephone. The growth of the telephone system was spectacular. Telephones were invented in 1876; by 1950, 39 million were in use in the United States. By 1980 this number had grown to 157 million. Unfortunately, hearing-impaired people, and especially deaf people, were left out. Until 1964 there was no real way a deaf person could communicate over a telephone without assistance from an interpreter. I grew up in the 1950s and graduated from high school in 1962.1 can tell you from personal experience that lack of telephone access really cramped the social life of a deaf teenager. A simple thing like calling a friend to get a homework assignment was a major task involving several people. Robert H. Weitbrecht, a deaf scientist who worked at the Stanford Research Institute, made a major breakthrough in telephone communication for deaf and hard of hearing people. As a ham radio enthusiast, he spent hours communicating with other operators . His friend, Dr. James Marsters, a deaf orthodontist, was not a ham radio operator, and communication between them was difficult. When Marsters obtained some ΤΤΎ equipment, a Teletype Model 32ASR, he asked Weitbrecht to develop a way for them to use TTYs to communicate by telephone. At that time AT&T did not allow equipment other than its own to be connected to telephone lines. To get around that requirement , Weitbrecht developed an acoustic coupler. An acoustic coupler accepts electronic signals from a ΤΊΎ and converts them into sound which it then sends into the microphone of a telephone handset. It also "hears" audio signals from the telephone handset and converts them to electronic signals which a TTY can understand. As the connection is acoustic, no actual physical connection is made with the telephone line. Telephone communication based on TTYs and Weitbrecht's new acoustic coupler was first demonstrated to the public at the A. G. Bell Association for the Deaf convention in 1964 at Salt Lake City. A year later in 1965, the R.H. Weitbrecht Company was founded to manufacture and sell Weitbrecht's acoustic coupler. The name was changed to Allied Communications Corporation in 1967. The early growth of the TDD system was slow. By 1968, four years after TTY communication was first demonstrated , only about 25 TTYs were in use by the deaf community. At this time, AT&T was switching from teletype equipment to computers. Since the old teletype equipment was incompatible with the new computer equipment, AT&T donated 8,000 obsolete TTYs to the deaf community. Since American Annals of the Deaf many machines were in need of adjustment or repair, local organizations were established to train personnel to repair and distribute these TlYs to deaf consumers. Among these organizations, one, founded in Indiana in 1968, was called the "Teletypewriters for the Deaf Distribution Committee of Indianapolis, Indiana ." In 1969 the name was changed to Teletypewriters for the Deaf, Incorporated ," and in 1979 it became "Telecommunications for the Deaf, Incorporated," better known as TDI. By the mid-1970s the deaf community was running out of old TDDs. As new instruments were expensive, several small companies set out to develop cheaper electronic versions of the TTY. To distinguish these newer models from the original TTYs, the term TDD (Telecommunication Device for the Deaf) came into use in 1979· The TDD market proved tougher than many manufacturers had expected . At the present, only two major TDD producers remain: Ultratec and Krown. Growth of the TDD system, however, has steadily increased. Hundreds of thousands of TDDs currently are in use, and the number will increase when all aspects of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) are in place. The Act calls for a national relay system and increased availability of TDDs at work and in public places. TDD Technology Contemporary telecommunications for the deaf is a curious mix of old teletype and new...