The Optacon
- From: "Francis Daniels" <fdaniels@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 19:41:41 -0700
You are forgiven. The Optacon, Optical to Tactile Converter, used a small
hand-held camera to convert an optical image into a vibrating tactile
representation of what the camera saw. The vibrating image was made up of
144 vibrating pins. Each pin corresponded to a sensor in the retina of the
camera. So if the camera was passed over the letter O, you would feel a
little round circle with a hole in the middle.
The vibrating array was controlled by two knobs. One let you set how
intense the vibrations were. The other knob set the contrast. That is, if
you were looking at text and the letters were very bold and thick, you could
adjust the contrast so that the letters became thinner and more readable.
You could also make the letters bigger or smaller, depending on the size of
the print.
The Optacon came with a number of lenses. One was used to read print.
Another was used to read small print. One was for the computer screen and
another was to read hand-held calculators.
The Optacon had a rechargable battery to run the eletronics. But it was
sealed, so if it failed, you had to send the unit to the shop to be
replaced.
I saw price fluctuations between $2500 up to over $4800 for the device.
Training was hard, lasting 60 hours. Talk about intense and exciting at the
same time. You could use it to read just about anything. Very cool
machine. I call it the OCR scanner without the OCR. That was the user's
part. You had to move the camera in a straight horizontal line and
interpret the display to read stuff. I was never very good with it, but I
was qualified to evaulate people on the machine.
Francis
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