Re: A Personal Anniversary
- From: "Mary Ellen Earls" <meearls@xxxxxxx>
- To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:12:30 -0700
Well I had heard about the optacon on and off in the early '70s and in 1975
wrote to TSI and got all the literature because I had all of these super
intellectual friends who read Tillich and Sartre and De Sharnet for
pleasure, and I wanted to read that stuff too.
Well my Parents were going to California a few months after I had received
the literature and in the envelope was a letter from someone.
Well Dad took the letter called TSI and made an appointment as he and Mom
were going to play golf at Pebble Beach and he thought they'd drive over to
TSI one afternoon.
They came home and were terribly excited about the Optacon but it wasn't
until I had worked for the Social Security administration for about a year
and a half that things really started happening. I was informed that SSA had
bought 20 optacons and would go to offices where blind people worked. The
thing was that apparently you had to really need the machines for your work.
Dayton's District Office was in trouble as far as performance so the
lastthing they needed was to have to read all of the stuff which came in to
a blind person.
So the folks arrived on October 13, 1977 and I had been given I guess tsi
had sent me a plastic sheet with Braille and print letters on that (remember
that?) Well I had subconsciously or subliminally learned these letters and
when they came to Dayton to talk to me and the management they asked me to
see if I could recognize a couple of letters. Well those couple of letters
progressed to a couple of pages of letters and I was reading sentences.
Well a couple of weeks later, I was told by my supervisor that 1. I had
scored 98% on the test they had given me for proficiency with the optacon. I
said "What test, I know of no test!" Then she said I would be leaving for
California on the 23rd of January, 1978 and it had been decided that Dayton
was not equipped to handle a blind person that I was to go to the Cincinnati
teleservice center where there were 2 blind people.
Ok I went for training came back to Cincinnati and was immediately told to
throw that damn machine out that no blind person especially a transfer would
have one in this gal's office.
So the optacon came home with me and the first book I read was _HARRY _S.
_TRUMAN by Margaret Truman Daniel.
And by the way about those philosophers, Tillic etc? I still haven't read
their works.
Mary Ellen Earls
----- Original Message -----
From: <Gailselfridge@xxxxxxx>
To: <optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 1:43 PM
Subject: Re: A Personal Anniversary
I can't say the exact date when I saw my first optacon but it was in April
of 1972 and I knew I had to have one. I got one in 1975 for my first
computer
programming job and worked for hours daily learning it. So I know what you
guys are talking about. Now I have two and although I use other things for
reading long documents, I wouldn't give up the versatility of the optacon.
Gail
John,
Your experience sounds so familiar. I first used an Optacon about thirty
years ago and felt much the same. I remember practising until my index
finger couldn't recognize anything. Then I'd try another finger! It's
truly an amazing machine, and one whose technology has never been
duplicated, even though it is so-called 1960's technology.
Happy anniversary!!!
Clinton
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Huffman" <_j.huffman@xxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:j.huffman@xxxxxxxxxxx)
>
To: <_optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) >
Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 9:58 PM
Subject: A Personal Anniversary
> Today is thirty-third anniversary of the day I first saw an Optacon and
> demonstrated it for myself. I was a new grad student at the University
> of
> Illinois--Urbana at the time, and the memory is still as fresh as
> yesterday.
> Print letters continued to pass under my left index finger for hours
> afterward! I think I made up my mind that day that I would master the
> device and someday find a way to own my own.
>
> Regards, all, JH
>
>
>
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