Optacon - History

History

The Optacon was the brainchild of John Linvill, a professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, who later became head of the Electrical Engineering Department. The Optacon was developed with researchers at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). Linvill was one of Telesensory's founders and Chairman of the Telesensory Board. The initial stimulus for development of the Optacon was Linvill's daughter, Candy (born 1952, blind since the age of 3). Using the Optacon, Candy graduated from Stanford and received a PhD. She has worked as a clinical psychologist since, so, like her father, she is often referred to in the press as "Dr. Linvill".

In 1962, during a sabbatical year in Switzerland, Linvill visited an IBM laboratory in Germany, where he observed a high speed printer that used a set of small pins—like hammers—to print letters onto strips of paper. He thought, "If you could feel the hammers with your fingertip, you could surely recognize the image." So on our return to Zurich, I told my wife and son and daughter, Candy, who was blind: "Guys, I've got the most magnificent idea. We'll make something that will let Candy read ordinary printed material." And although his family laughed at this notion, "oh, that'll never work!" the idea for the Optacon was born.

Upon returning to Stanford, Linvill, together with graduate students G.J. Alonzo and John Hill, developed the concept further with the support of the Office of Naval Research. A key aspect of Linvill's concept was to use vibrating piezoelectric reeds, called bimorphs, to move the pins in a two-dimensional array to produce tactile images. The idea of using vibrating bimorphs was critical for several reasons:

• The high power efficiency of the piezoelectric bimorphs made a battery-powered reading machine possible.
• The small size and weight of the bimorphs was also essential for portability.
• Later psychophysical experiments discovered that vibration around the resonance of conveniently sized bimorphs was optimum for the sense of touch.

In 1964 Linvill applied for a patent, and U.S. Patent 3,229,387 was granted in January 1966.