"TALKING BOOK"

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21290, 9 October 1934, Page 12

"TALKING BOOK"

ADAPTED GRAMOPHONE USE FOR THE BLIND It is expected that within a year the blind in Christchurch will be able to listen to books instead of reading them by Braille. This is due to an ingenious device introduced to New Zealand by Sir lan Fraser, eliairman of St. Dunstan's. The machine, which is called the "talking book," is an adaptation of the gramophone to meet the special needs of the blind. The trustees of the New Zealand Institute for. the Blind have been very deeply impressed with the possibilities of the equipment, and if the finance is available the institute will immediately place orders for records, so as to assist in enabling the "talking book" to be published at a price that will bring them within reach of most institutes for the blind. The equipment brought by Sir lan Fraser was made at St. Dunstan's. It is an electric gramophone geared so that the speed of the records may be reduced from the ordinary 70 or 80 revolutions to 16 or 18. The records used are specially made for use at the muoh slower speed, and each one contains four times as much as the record in general use. The plates demonstrated here run for 21 minutes, but experimenters are working on records to last for an hour. Four or five of these would be sufficient to record the whole of a book of ordinary length.

Record libraries The director of the institute, Mr Clutha Mackenzie, who is very enthusiastic about the invention, yesterday expressed the hope that a "talking book" library would be established in Christchurch within a year. He said that the initial cost of recording one book would be about £BO. Just as in printing, however, the initial cost was much the heaviest part of it, and additional copies could be reproduced for about 10s. "It does not replace Braille," Mr Mackenzie said, "but it replaces the sighted reader. The idea is to have these records held in central libraries for the blind in the same manner as Braille books are now kept. They would occupy much less space than Braille." Work is being done on this invention at three different places. In London, St. Dunstan's and the National Institute for the Blind are working together on it, and similar experiments are being carried on in Los Angeles and by the American Foundation for the Blind in New York. The Los Angeles experimenter is using the principle of starting the needle from the centre of the record and grading the speed of the turn-table as the needle works out toward the circumference The electric motor turn-table costs about £4.

Subsidised Sets It is expected that the complete equipment will be manufactured within the next 12 months, and if it proves sufficiently popular it will be of little more expense than the corresponding books in Braille. Even those who are not blind, such as elderly people whose sight is failing, will prefer to have [a book read out to them instead of ha « v , m ?, to , read u for themseves. Mr Mackenzie said that probably the | institute would subsidise these sets a* it at present subsidises radio sets tYDewriters. Braille writers and other apparatus for the blind. It might be found necessary to make a special appeal to the public for finance to enable the institute to do this. "Ticmendously useful as Braille is" said Mr Mackenzie, "it. is seldom that more than one-third of the blind dodulation is ever able to acquire efficiency in reading it. Many have not the necessary delicacy of touch and beyond middle life most people have lost the ability to learn it. Blind people receive wonderfully unselfish service from sighted friends who read aloud to them, but that imposes a fairly severe strain on the reader. It is a tiring process, and this scheme would relieve our good friends of much arduous work."