Excerpt from the New York Times:
Dr. James Marsters passed away. He and two deaf colleagues broke that barrier for themselves and tens of thousands of other hearing-impaired people in 1964 when they converted an old, bulky, clacking Teletype machine into a device that could relay a typewritten conversation through a telephone line. It was the first example of what became commonly known as a TTY and is now, in a greatly updated and compact version, called a text telephone.
When they introduced their device, the partners met strong resistance from AT&T, which then had virtual control over the nation?s telephone system and prohibited direct connections to its network.
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I'm don't think that's correct. For many years both AT&T and Western Union offered switched teleprinter services that anyone could get (TWX and Telex). AT&T also would rent Teletypes for use on its voice network for people to call computer time sharing services.
Also, I believe AT&T would rent anyone a modem for connection to privately owned equipment. Normally that would be a computer, but there were other machines, such as process control and telemetry reporting, that were connected as well. The modem acted as the interface to protect the network. All machines of course were owned by the user, AT&T did not rent out any computers. So if someone had an old refurbished Teletype AT&T would rent them a modem. (Also, private line subscribers could use their own modems.)
What I think Dr. Marsters' developed was a _low-cost_ system for deaf people to use instead of renting a Bell System modem, teleprinter, or a Western Union Telex connection. Since AT&T's and WU's services were intended for busineses, the prices weren't cheap.
***** Moderator's Note *****TWX and TELEX were, as you point out, too expensive for ordinary users, but there were other barriers to deaf/hearing-impaired users having access to the telephone network, and the inventors had to overcome all of them.
- TWX and TELEX machines worked on closed networks; nobody without a TWX or TELEX machine could communicate with them, so even those few Deaf/Hearing-impaired users who could afford to have access couldn't depend on being able to reach another Deaf/Hearing-impaired user.
- The only dial-up data services available for connections via the PSTN was Tymnet (Telenet wasn't established until 1974): it was geared to business users, and it didn't have any capability for placing calls to destinations on the PSTN or to manually-controlled nodes.
- The modems available for use on ordinary POTS lines were "Full-duplex" designs, which wouldn't operate unless they were constantly connected with the same type of modem. That meant that they wouldn't work with common telephone devices such as answering machines, and that they couldn't be used in situations where only one person on the call was Deaf or Hearing-impaired, which is a very common occurence, especially with "Late deafened" adults who have lost their hearing but are still able to speak intelligibly.
Marsters, Weitbrecht, and Saks solved these problems with a combination of innovation and elbow-grease:
- They chose to use the older Model 15/19 and Model 28 Teletype machines which ham operators were also using. These machines were nearing the end of their commercial life, and were relatively inexspensive.
- They designed and built a half-duplex modem which is compatible with telephone answering machines: it could be used to record an outgoing message which would be printed on a caller's machine, and also to leave a message for later printing by the recipient.
- They included automatic Transmit/Receive switching, which allowed for calls to be made where one party was using a TDD and the other was speaking, as in the case of late-deafened adults.
In a sense, the TDD was a "bridge" device, which made it possible for Deaf/Hearing-impaired users to make use of the PSTN during the time that the Internet was developing. Since it's now routine for most major companies to have a web presence, and for them to offer customer service and bill payments online, there's less of a need for a device which will operate on the PSTN, but this is a (surprisingly sharp) double-edged sword.
- Many Deaf/Hearing-impaired users depend on the TDD as their only means of access to government services such as the registry of motor vehicles or their local tax assessor, but at the same time that these organizations have adapted to the Internet, they have tended to step back from TDD services and upkeep.
- Dependence on Email and web-sites for communications between Deaf/Hearing-impaired users has reduced demand for TDD devices and training, which has pushed prices up and re-introduced the problem of not knowing what system a given user has available.
- The TDD gave Deaf/Hearing-impaired citizens a small compensation for the marginalizatoin they endured in many aspects of their lives. Since TDD devices were not designed to communicate with computers, government agencies and utilities (which were mandated to offerr TDD lines) did, as a result, sometimes give a higher standard of customer service to TDD users than to the hearing public. TDD users could usually get through to a government agency much more quickly than those using voice, and they were also spared the dubious benefits of voice-response systems.
Dr. Marsters and his team changed the world for deaf and hearin-impaired telephone users. I'm sad to see him go. Bill Horne