I believe the year was 1975, maybe earlier. I was living in Sands Point, New York where the Helen Keller Center for the Deaf-Blind is located. I visited the Center and was shown around the facility by one of the administrators. I spent the entire morning there. I remember seeing one room in which 5 or 6 people were seated along one side of a long table. The room was very quiet. Each person was alone and busy using his hands with some Arts & Crafts project.

What struck me was that the people at the table were not communicating with each other in any manner. Each person was in his own world, isolated not only from society, but from each other. Communication was not an integral everyday part of their world as it is with everybody else. The only communication they would share in their lives would be tactile sign language with their mates, if they were fortunate enough to have mates, and their interpreters, and virtually no one else. Neither their mates nor interpreters were in their worlds while they were at the table. Deaf-blind people live in a terribly restricted, narrow and isolated world.

I returned to my home, and for whatever reason, an idea for a new invention, communication equipment serving the deaf-blind, came to me, and over the next few months I set about producing that equipment. That was my first invention for sensory-deprived people. It would enable deaf blind people to independently communicate face-to-face with hearing and/or sighted people in English without help from interpreters or anyone.

It would give deaf-blind people a measure of independent personal face-to-face expression, communication and sharing with hearing and/or sighted people which they do not now have with anyone This would be a keyboard communication system consisting of an IBM Braille typewriter and a regular typewriter, a Braille-print system. I modified two computer keyboards so that either keyboard would simultaneously activate both typewriters. The deaf-blind user would sit at the Braille typewriter, a sighted person would sit at the regular typewriter. The deaf-blind person would type a message on his modified keyboard which would simultaneously appear as a Braille embossed statement on paper coming out of his machine and as a printout on the sighted person’s regular typewriter.

The deaf-blind person would run his fingers over and understand the Braille message produced when the sighted person was typing, and the sighted person could read what the deaf-blind person was typing. This way, the two people could communicate face-to-face with each other in English -- no tactile sign language, no interpreter assistance needed..

I purchased a portable typewriter at a local department store. I learned that the New York Public Library had Braille typewriters, and arranged with that Library to borrow one of their typewriters. That was from the branch across the street from the Main Branch (with the lions) on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street.
The basic system idea was to position sets of push-type solenoids over the typewriter keys of both typewriters. When either keyboard was activated, the solenoids on both typewriters would press down and activate the keys to simultaneously produce Braille and hard copy print-outs. The initial problem was to find out if such solenoids were available. I figured that the keys on virtually all typewriters regardless of manufacturer required pretty much the same downward finger push force to activate the keys.

The first thing I had to do was determine the size of that finger push force. I placed a slender empty plastic medical prescription vial on one of the keys, then filled it with salt until it became heavy enough to activate the key. I used the same filled vial to activate other keys on both typewriters. I took the filled vial down to the Manhasset Post Office where it was carefully weighed on a Post Office scale. As best as I can recall, it came in at around 1 1/2 ounces. This would be the minimum force push-type solenoids must have to activate the keys.

Next, I started rounding up catalog information from push-type solenoid manufacturers. Knowing that the standard distance between keys in a row on a typewriter is 3/4”, and that the standard distance between rows of keys on a typewriter is 3/4”, I searched the catalogs for push-type solenoids which were less than 3/4” in diameter, and delivering a force greater than I 1/2 ounces. I found what I was looking for and ordered a quantity of solenoids for the two typewriter keyboards.

Scaffold frameworks were needed which would hold the solenoids in position over the keyboard keys. I built two scaffolds out of angled aluminum strip, drilled holes into the angled aluminum, mounted the solenoids into the holes, positioned the scaffolds over each typewriter keyboard (the Braille and the regular typewriters), wired each scaffold to each of the keyboards, and inserted an electrical switch into the carriage track so that when the carriage swung over to the left, the switch would be thrown to activate a vibrator attached to the deaf-blind person’s chair. When the deaf-blind person felt the vibration, he’d press the return key which returned the carriage to the start position on the right (and the vibration would stop).

I also introduced roll stock paper to be used instead of sheet paper. This allowed continuous, uninterrupted feeding of paper to both machines without interruptions in ongoing communication while two people were communicating with each other. There would be no interruptions due to sheet feeding. Both machines were each fed with a roll of 8 ½” wide paper, the standard paper width for both machines.

I had built a machine system which would enable a deaf-blind person to independently communicate with a sighted person in English. Various people saw it including engineers from IBM who were fascinated with my use of roll stock and the vibrator. Note that I was living in Sands Point at the time. I had called people at the Helen Keller Center for the Deaf-Blind and invited them to come see what I had. Of all people, they were not interested, and would not visit my workshop, especially the interpreters.

I called an agency serving the blind. A lady there asked if my invention was portable. I pointed out that what I had was prototype equipment, and that it was not portable. The lady at the agency said, “What good is it if it isn’t portable?” She dismissed the equipment as worthless.

The situation then is still true today. There is no communication equipment, portable or not, which is available to the deaf-blind that enables this handicapped sector to independently communicate with sighted people in English. I was in touch with various agencies and institutions. No one at Gallaudet University, the National Association of the Deaf, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and other noted places including associations for the deaf-blind expressed any interest in seeing the equipment. They sent me polite notes congratulating me on my work, but that was all.

I sent simultaneously produced copies of Braille and print read-outs to various organizations including the National Association of the Deaf which also headquarters the organization for the Deaf-Blind, Gallaudet University and many others. Everyone most politely thanked me for my work and interest, but no one wanted to see the machine. I recall being contacted by a deaf-blind person. He was genuinely interested. He sent me correspondence which he had typed. He was the only person who expressed strong interest in the equipment I had built.

That invention was my introduction to the administrators and interpreters serving the sensory-deprived community. What I didn’t know at the time was that most deaf-blind people do not type, and that many do not know Braille. They hardly know any English. In order to use my system, the deaf-blind person must have both Braille and touch-typing skills. So, my machine, if it did become available even as portable equipment, would have very limited appeal. I also learned that there are very few deaf-blind people in the country. Only a few thousand. Finally, I learned of the powerful relationship which exists between interpreters and the deaf-blind people they serve and how interpreters, in order to protect their livelihood, would do everything they can to discredit my invention.

The idea for keyboard communication equipment serving the deaf-blind is a good idea. But interpreters serving this group hate this equipment because they fear it will rob them of their livelihood. Certainly, if it ever comes to pass that face-to-face communication equipment can be made available to deaf-blind people and be used by them, then these disadvantaged people will learn more about the world which surrounds them and the world in which they live.

They will learn something about being independent and free, conditions which they cannot possibly comprehend at this time. They will learn that there is a world of very knowable and very understandable people out there who can enrich their lives. Communication equipment will give them the power and the independence they need to be in touch with and share with the world around them. If this equipment was around in Helen Keller’s time, I’m sure she would have been among the first to enjoy using it.

My interests in the problems of the deaf evolved from my interest in the deaf-blind. For a period when I was living in Florida I attended get-togethers of blind people involved in painting, sculpting and other arts projects. I met one blind artist, a lady afflicted with a progressive disease which severely limited her eyesight. I mentioned the idea of tactile art for the blind, and suggested the idea of someone building a massive, huge sculpture of a nude man or woman made of material that felt like human skin. This huge sculpture would be.encircled by a walk-on scaffold so that blind and deaf-blind people would be able to walk upon the scaffold and touch and feel various parts of the sculpture.

This would be a large creative problem. A scaffold would first have to be built which would serve the artist creating the sculpture as well as blind and deaf-blind visitors using the scaffold to feel the sculpture. I, personally, was unable to assist in this project if it would be undertaken. The blind artist was greatly interested in the proposed project, but I do not know whether she, together with others, commenced any work on it.}

For reasons I do not understand to this very day, for more than 30 years I stayed with the problems of the deaf. Considering the obstacles I faced over the years, common wisdom would have seen me quit and stay away years ago. But this did not happen.

I quit a thousand times and came back a thousand times. Am I a masochist? Perhaps, but the fact is if I did quit and stayed quit, my ideas, observations, inventions and conclusions including my ideas for deaf education, Modem Deaf Employment and my eventual ideas for Radio for the Deaf and the DVD Video Dictionary would not have emerged, and this statement would never have been made. Most importantly, I never would have met Carrie, the deaf lady from Alabama who validated my beliefs about the absolute need for face-to-face communication equipment in the lives of deaf people if they shall emerge as an independent resourceful people in charge of their future.

Morton Warnow