Thanks a lot for this link. I haven't had time to finish
it yet but I did get a good start.
Believe it or not, there was a war over the Talking Book
system a long time ago. Some fellow came up with a device called
the "Readophone" which used a belt like a Dicta belt if you are
familiar with those. The readophone camp said their technology
was superior to disks and there was apparently a lot of back and
forth kind of like the NFB and ACB today.
I can get in to an argument with somebody as easy as the
next person, but these battles should be settled on technical
merits alone. It sounds like Braille became the world standard
because it seems to have fewer basic design flaws than New York
Point and several other tactile systems which certainly did get
used for a long time.
The readophone system worked, I am sure, but it would
have suffered the same deficiencies that Edison's wax cylinders
did, namely that duplication and mastering were a real pain
compared with mastering and duplication of phonograph disks.
As far as I can tell, the best technology did win out in
the war of the dots and in the Talking Book realm.
I think electronic Braille will eventually cause even
more interest in Braille if we can ever get the cost of the
hardware down to somewhere below the top of the ionosphere. I
would love to help fix that problem but so far, I have not run
across the solution yet. I'll know it the day I find it because
I know exactly what it should be and there are some materials
that are close to what we need but not quite there yet.
Anyway, thanks for the interesting link.
Martin
"Stores, Mary A." writes:
> Hi Martin,
>
> Yes, I had heard of it. Shortly after I moved to Bloomington someone told
> me about the War of the Dots, and I came across a good summary of why the
> different methods of braille were fought over and chosen here in the uS:
> http://www.afb.org/warofthedots/book.asp
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