ELECTRICAL READERS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 96, 4 February 1936, Page 7

ELECTRICAL READERS

boon for blind people. It would appear that talking news papers for the blind are a distinct possibility before long, states an English journal. With the aid of gramophone records such talking books are already being made, hut gramophone recoids are bulky things. Now an adaptation of the sound-track idea used for talking films makes it possible to record on 500 feet of film a full-length novel. There are 20 sound-tracks running to and fro along tlie whole length ol the film which means 10,000 feet of soundtrack ; and as the Libraphone, as the new invention is called, projects tie film at a quarter the speed necessaij for the cinema, a 500-feet Libraphone film is equal to 40,000 feet of cinema film. This means a reading lasting for seven hours. The Libraphone talking apparatus is something like a portable gramophone with two turntables. It has a photoelectric cell for converting the soundtrack into sound, and also the necessary amplifiers. An ingenious arrangement causes the turntables to reverse when the end of one 500-feet track is reached, so that the film can be run back through the machine with the next track in position, and so 011 until the film is ended. Yet another invention which makes possible the talking newspaper has been demonstrated in London. In this case tlie record can be printed on paper with ordinary ink. In making the record a piece of sensitised film 17 inches by 20 is wrapped round a cylinder, and as the cylinder rotates a photographic record is made of light fluctuations caused bv sound waves.

When this film is developed prints can be taken from which line blocks are made, and vast numbers of records can be printed from the blocks as newspaper pictures are printed. The Fotoliptofono, the apparatus which plays over the records, can he plugged into an ordinary wireless set.