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Daina Bouquin: It is nineteen
eighteen, and Mary Jameson is

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reading.

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She was born blind, and she
usually reads braille.

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But the page in front of her is
an ordinary printed page.

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Black ink on white paper.

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There is a machine between her
and the page.

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A delicate arrangement of
lenses and wires, a spinning

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disc and a small piece of an
element called Selenium.

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As the mechanism moves slowly
across the print, the machine

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sends a collection of musical
notes into a pair of telephone

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receivers.

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And Mary listens.

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She hears in the sounds one
letter, then another.

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Eventually, a word.

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It is slow work.

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And the machine is
temperamental.

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Its focusing mechanism is so
delicate that someone walking

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heavily across the room can
knock it out of alignment.

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But Mary has been practicing.

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By the summer of 1918, she can
read about one word per minute.

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And that is enough to prove
that it is possible.

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I'm Daina Bouquin and this is
Found in the Machine.

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In June 1912, a physicist named
Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe

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arrives at an optical convention
in London with an invention.

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Fournier d'Albe is an unusual
man.

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A scientist and writer with
interests ranging from

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electricity to spiritualism.

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He knows some of the most
prominent thinkers of the age.

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He has befriended Harry
Houdini.

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And he has spent years studying
the properties of a chemical

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element called selenium.

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Selenium does something
peculiar.

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In darkness, it resists the
passage of electricity.

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But if you shine a light on it,
that resistance changes.

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Alexander Graham Bell had used
it in an instrument that

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transmitted sound on a beam of
light.

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And in Poland, an
ophthalmologist named Kazimierz

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Noiszewski had used it as an
artificial eye to help blind

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people tell light from darkness.

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And Fournier d'Albe is working
on a very similar idea.

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His instrument is housed in a
slender wooden box.

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Inside is a selenium cell that
responds to light, producing

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changes in an electrical signal
that a person can hear through

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telephone receivers.

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Point it toward a window and
the sound changes.

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Move it toward a corner and it
changes again.

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He calls it the exploring
optophone, and he imagines it

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helping blind people navigate
the world.

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The newspapers are delighted.

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But among the people who learn
about the invention is a blind

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solicitor named Washington
Ranger.

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Ranger writes to Fournier
d'Albe.

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What concerns him is how a
blind person might earn a

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living.

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A person who can detect a
window has learned something

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about a room.

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But a person who can read an
ordinary printed page has access

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to an enormous part of the
working world.

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Letters, newspapers, documents,
books.

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So Fournier d'Albe begins
working on another machine.

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By 1913, he has an experimental
reading optophone.

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The First World War interrupts
his work, but he returns to it,

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building an instrument that
turns the shapes of printed

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letters into sounds.

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To understand how this machine
works, imagine a capital T.

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One upright line topped with a
horizontal stroke.

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Now imagine a tiny vertical row
of lights moving slowly across

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that letter from left to right.

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Each of the little lights
flickers at a different rate,

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corresponding to a different
musical note.

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The flickering comes from a
spinning disc pierced with holes

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laid out in concentric rings
passing in front of a lamp.

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When the light falls on white
paper, it reflects back toward a

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selenium cell.

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And the listener hears a chord.

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All of the notes are on.

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But black ink reflects much
less light.

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So when the light passes over
the ink, some notes disappear.

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So as the row of lights moves
across the T, the beginning of

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the top stroke interrupts a
note.

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Then the vertical line
interrupts the whole chord.

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The light continues past the
vertical line with only the top

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stroke continuing to interrupt
one note.

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A person listening through the
device has to recognize the

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letter T by the notes that
disappear.

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It's reading by absence.

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In the spring of 1917, Fournier
d'Albe demonstrates the

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instrument to representatives of
the National Institute for the

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Blind.

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He manages to read an
unfamiliar newspaper passage,

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but the demonstration does
little to convince them.

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This machine is slow.

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It takes extensive training,
and its practical usefulness

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remains uncertain.

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And these are reasonable
objections.

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But Fournier d'Albe keeps
looking for people willing to

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learn.

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That year he meets 18-year-old
Mary Jameson and her twin sister

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Margaret.

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The sisters already know
Braille, and now they begin

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learning the strange new system
of sounds.

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And Mary takes to it.

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Not immediately.

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There is nothing immediate
about learning the optophone.

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She must memorize the musical
patterns of printed letters.

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She must distinguish sounds
that can be maddeningly similar.

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And she has to manage the
machine itself.

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Page must be positioned
correctly, and the mechanism

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must be focused.

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The scanner must be moving at
the right speed.

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Too quickly and the letters
become an unintelligible stream.

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But too slowly and she loses
track of what came before.

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But she practices.

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And by August 1918, she gives a
demonstration at King's College

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in London.

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Someone in the audience has
connections to Barr and Stroud,

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a Scottish company known for
precision optical instruments.

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And the company agrees to build
a more practical optophone.

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The machine is sturdier with a
curved glass surface on which a

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book can rest.

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Its scanning mechanism moves
more reliably across the page.

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And its designers add a second
Selenium cell so the machine can

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sound the black ink itself.

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Now, instead of listening for
the notes that disappear, Mary

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can listen for the notes that
are there.

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But the signals are faint.

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And after an hour or two, the
selenium cells begin crackling.

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In June 1920, Fournier d'Albe
announces in the journal Nature

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that the problem of opening the
world's literature to blind

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readers has been solved.

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It is a remarkable claim and
entirely premature.

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The Optophone is expensive.

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It remains difficult to
operate, and it demands an

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enormous investment of time.

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Mary knows this better than
anyone.

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By now she is its most
accomplished reader.

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She travels to demonstrations
and exhibitions, showing

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audiences what the machine can
do.

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And she is also helping to
design it.

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At Bar and Stroud's London
branch, she works with an

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engineer named A.

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M.

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Lundie.

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She suggests changes to the
musical notes so that certain

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letters are easier to tell
apart.

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She asks for stronger signals
to hear over the noise of the

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mechanism itself.

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She works with Lundie on a
device that moves between lines

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and on a feature for reading
italic type.

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She teaches other blind people
how to use it.

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And her speed keeps climbing.

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From one word per minute to 25,
then 40, then 60.

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She is doing the labor of a
developer and a public

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ambassador, but she is doing it
informally.

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So her father, Thomas Jameson,
writes to Barr and Stroud.

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He wants the company to
recognize her vital work with

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proper compensation and a formal
place.

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00:11:06,879 --> 00:11:11,919
Barr and Stroud pays Mary for
individual demonstrations, but

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never gives her regular
employment.

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Still, she keeps working.

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And in 1921, Mary sits down to
read a novel.

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It is The Warden by Anthony
Trollope.

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Published in 1855, it tells the
story of a kindly clergyman

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caught in a dispute over money
at a charitable institution.

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Mary places the book on the
Optophone.

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She finds the first line and
she begins to read.

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She no longer labors over
individual sounds.

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Familiar patterns begin to come
together.

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And she starts to notice
something.

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The more she reads a particular
author, the easier it becomes

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to anticipate what comes next.

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A writer has habits, certain
turns of phrase.

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But when she begins a book by
someone new, the work becomes

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harder again.

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So she deliberately decides to
read writers who differ widely

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in style.

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She reads Nathaniel Hawthorne's
The Scarlet Letter, an

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autobiography by Herman Charles
Merivale, and others.

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And she finishes The Warden.

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But even as Mary becomes more
proficient, the future of the

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Optophone is becoming less
certain.

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Most people who try it never
approach her speed, and few

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schools can afford one.

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Braille is already established,
reliable, and widely taught.

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By 1922, Barr and Stroud is
doubting whether there will ever

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be enough customers.

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By 1928, the company has
stopped pushing the machines.

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Fournier d'Albe dies in 1933.

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Only a small number of
Optophones have been sold.

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But Mary Jameson keeps reading.

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In 1944, the organization St. Dunstan's takes up the British Optophone and replaces the old selenium cells with photoelectric cells that are much louder. In the 1950s, a man named W. K. Hill improves the focusing, making it easier to tell similar letters apart. Mary tests the changes. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, engineers at RCA are building a machine that tries to identify the printed characters itself. The effort is led in part by Vladimir Zworykin, a man who had examined Fournier d'Albe's Optophones decades earlier. RCA's
work is an early step toward

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what we now call optical
character recognition.

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The task of deciphering the
page is beginning to move from

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the person into the machine.

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It is 1966.

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Nearly 50 years have passed
since Mary first sat down with

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the Optophone.

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She records a presentation for
a conference on reading machines

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in the United States.

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00:14:41,840 --> 00:14:46,559
She remembers the delicate
early machine.

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00:14:46,559 --> 00:14:50,559
But most of her talk concerns
the machines being built now.

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She's still asking questions to
improve listening devices.

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She wonders which notes are
easier to distinguish and which

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00:15:00,639 --> 00:15:03,200
letters are harder to recognize.

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00:15:03,200 --> 00:15:07,679
In the years that follow Mary's
presentation, she exchanges

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00:15:07,679 --> 00:15:11,200
letters and tape recordings with
blind Americans working on

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newer machines.

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00:15:12,480 --> 00:15:17,279
One of them, Harvey Lauer of
the United States Veterans

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Administration, sends her a
device called a visotoner.

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00:15:21,200 --> 00:15:26,080
It's smaller and more portable
than her old Optophone, but it

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is hard to keep aligned with the
text and it struggles with

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certain colors of ink.

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00:15:30,639 --> 00:15:33,360
She weighs the two machines.

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00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:37,360
She knows what she likes about
her old one and she knows what

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00:15:37,360 --> 00:15:38,960
she wishes it could do.

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00:15:38,960 --> 00:15:42,159
She knows what it already does.

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00:15:43,039 --> 00:15:45,600
Mary Jameson (archival audi: The
Optophone is as much a part of

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00:15:45,600 --> 00:15:49,519
my everyday life as the
typewriter or telephone.

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00:15:49,519 --> 00:15:54,240
Sometimes the print is too big
for the Optophone array.

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00:15:54,240 --> 00:15:57,840
At others, italics are too
sloping.

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00:15:57,840 --> 00:16:03,519
While noting the shortcomings
of the Optophone, I can use the

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00:16:03,519 --> 00:16:06,879
valuable facilities it already
gives.

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00:16:06,879 --> 00:16:13,440
I hope this situation makes me
of use in solving vital print

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00:16:13,440 --> 00:16:15,919
reading problems which remain.

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00:16:16,559 --> 00:16:20,639
Daina Bouquin: Mary Jameson
passes away in 1980.

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00:16:20,639 --> 00:16:25,200
By then the Optophone belongs
to an earlier age.

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00:16:25,200 --> 00:16:29,200
Computers will soon recognize
printed letters on their own and

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00:16:29,200 --> 00:16:30,639
read them out loud.

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00:16:30,639 --> 00:16:36,639
But there is a photograph of
Mary, taken decades earlier.

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00:16:36,639 --> 00:16:41,840
She is seated at an Optophone
reading The Warden.

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00:16:41,840 --> 00:16:46,960
She wears a pair of telephone
receivers over her ears.

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00:16:46,960 --> 00:16:50,799
The book rests on the machine
in front of her.

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00:16:50,799 --> 00:16:56,480
Somewhere inside a disc is
spinning and light is falling

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00:16:56,480 --> 00:16:58,399
across the printed page.

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00:16:58,399 --> 00:17:02,320
And the machine is making its
little collection of sounds.

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00:17:02,320 --> 00:17:06,319
Mary knows what they say.

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00:17:06,319 --> 00:17:13,519
I'm Daina Bouquin and this is
Found in the Machine.

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00:17:13,519 --> 00:17:21,279
If you enjoy my stories,
consider passing them along or

239
00:17:21,279 --> 00:17:25,039
leaving a rating or a review
wherever you listen.

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00:17:25,039 --> 00:17:29,279
And if you'd like to support
the show, you can go to found in

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00:17:29,519 --> 00:17:34,319
the machine.com/ support, and
you can find our Patreon and

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00:17:34,319 --> 00:17:36,480
other ways to support the show.

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The most recent bonus episode
received by Patreon members was

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about the twenty thirty-eight
problem.

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Thanks for listening, guys.