[HN Gopher] Paul Taylor, the engineer who created the TTY machin...
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Paul Taylor, the engineer who created the TTY machine for the deaf,
has died
Author : wallflower
Score : 317 points
Date : 2021-02-06 03:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oregonlive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oregonlive.com)
| gen3 wrote:
| I never knew the origins of the TTY console on my machine. To
| hear it was an accessibility tool at first is really cool. It
| does make sense that if these were widely available, people would
| use them to dial into a computer!
|
| I wonder what other interesting innovations I use that I don't
| realize have such a deep history. Thanks for sharing the article.
| jeofken wrote:
| It is a different device than the TTY commonly emulated in your
| terminal window.
|
| Naming things is one of the two hard things in computer
| science, along with naming things and off by one errors.
| mechanicum wrote:
| It wasn't an accessibility tool first. TTY dates from the
| mid-19th century.
|
| Paul Taylor's innovations were to use the technology to provide
| telecommunications for the deaf, and then lobby for the
| creation of the operator relay system enabling TTY users to
| communicate with people who didn't have a TTY. The machines
| already existed.
| jrimbault wrote:
| Both are TeleTYpewriters but they are not the same device.
| glasss wrote:
| Working in IT, the vast majority of engineers and IT adjacent
| people have little care or desire to learn about phone or
| communications systems. Especially nowadays when Teams and Zoom
| take care of your VoIP woes on the backend, and AWS or Azure are
| always doing something way cooler than a PBX can.
|
| I was lucky to work alongside an enterprise PBX architect and not
| only learn about phone systems, but come to appreciate the
| history of them as well. One of the more interesting things to me
| has always been the amount of accessibility that gets designed
| into phone systems. TTY, translation services, different
| languages, etc. It's something that always reminds me we're
| designing and dealing with a wide variety of humans that I don't
| get when designing a network.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| A couple of years ago I converted a telephone handset into a
| lineman's handset to troubleshoot the PBX system at work. As a
| kid I'd always marveled at how two-way voice (and data!)
| communication and numbers could be transmitted over four wires,
| and it really blew my mind when I learned that just two are
| being used per line.
|
| We had pulse-tone rotary phones which were simple enough to
| understand - just count the pulses. I'm still working on
| completely grasping the combined tones used in touch-tone
| dialing, specifically the way they would have been interpreted
| at the switchboard before the introduction of digital PBX
| systems.
| mark-r wrote:
| I loved being able to dial a number just by clicking the
| hang-up button fast enough and counting. Unfortunately pulse
| dialing is obsolete enough that you'd have a hard time
| finding a system where that still works.
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| I built PBX software as VoIP took over. Parallelizing virtual
| telephony timing with CPU virtualization was a fun and
| challenging project.
|
| It is amazing to me how few people understand the transition
| from phreaking to hacking culture...
|
| 2600 at least should be taught in every CS degree program as a
| footnote of the industry...
| rootsudo wrote:
| For the tone: No one cares about blue boxing, beige boxing or
| the old tales of cap'n crunch unless you bring up how he was
| banned/potential pedo.
|
| For the culture: 2600 magazines are also considered
| contraband in many parts of the world, and also stopped
| distribution, turns out if many fans of your work are
| pirates, it may be hard to have circulation.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The lesson about in-band vs. out-of-band signaling is a
| good one, even if the specifics of blue boxing aren't
| discussed. The evolution of panel-pulsing to MF to SS7 is
| interesting, and knowing some of that history provides
| context to why some things are the way they are today in
| voice telephony.
| _nalply wrote:
| Teletypes in Switzerland were ITU V.21 with three modifications:
|
| - 110 baud instead of 300 baud
|
| - not full duplex
|
| - carrier tone
|
| I experimented with a Java application and FFT to try to write a
| soft modem, so I still know the exact specification by heart. Bit
| 1 was 960 Hz, Bit 0 was 1160 Hz, the carrier tone 1060 Hz, and
| there were 2 stop bits. This means, the teletype could transmit
| 11 letters a second.
|
| The carrier tone is special: if someone stopped typing, the
| teletype switched to the carrier tone and kept it on for about 3
| seconds then stopped.
|
| Being not full-duplex Deaf users used a convention so they know
| when they can type. The called party begins typing and ends with
| two stars, like this **. Then the caller knows he can type and
| also indicates the end with two stars. When a party is ready to
| hang up the phone he writes four stars.
|
| This is what my model (Telescrit) looked like:
| https://db1.rehadat.de/rehadat/bilder/TC058000/tc058773.jpg
| smogcutter wrote:
| > When a party is ready to hang up the phone he writes four
| stars.
|
| I wish we had a convention like this for text messages. Some
| generally accepted way to "hang up" that isn't taken as rude.
|
| It's a nonissue with people you text frequently, the
| conversation just waxes and wanes naturally. Maybe it's just
| me, but for texts with acquaintances, distant relations, etc,
| theres no good way to end the interaction like there is over
| the phone. You can't just text "alright I gotta go, talk to you
| later".
| egberts wrote:
| Modern TTY users indicate the end of conversation by typing in
| "GA" at the end denoting Go Ahead.
|
| And end of transmission by ending it with "SKSK" for Stop
| Keying.
| lancebeet wrote:
| If there are others here who are as confused as I was by this
| article, what they're referring to is not a "regular" teleprinter
| or a software TTY as the audience on this website might expect,
| but a teleprinter accessibility device which is also called a
| TTY:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_device_for_...
| dang wrote:
| We've edited the title to make that clearer. Thanks!
| patriarchybad wrote:
| Please consider using "hearing impaired" as a more inclusive
| term, or ideally "deaf and hard of hearing". Their are plenty of
| people who can still hear some things but are not entirely deaf.
| elil17 wrote:
| Of Deaf and hard of hearing people I know, the young ones (less
| than 50) all really dislike the term "hearing impaired" because
| it implies that they are impaired (in the view of many, it's
| hearing people who are impaired because we don't know how to
| communicate using sign languages). Many also believe that
| "Deaf" should be capitalized because of the Deaf community's
| shared language and culture.
| gspq wrote:
| "Hard of hearing" is more neutral and better accepted.
| retrac wrote:
| As someone younger who is HoH, I have no objection to the
| term hearing impaired. Though I can understand why someone
| might find it derogatory as it does, indeed, emphasize the
| lack of ability.
|
| But that's actually why I use the term myself. I have found
| that euphemisms, including "hard of hearing" often don't
| successfully communicate what needs to be conveyed.
|
| "Hard of hearing" just doesn't seem to sink in. Even "very
| hard of hearing" doesn't. Often the other person thinks it
| must be like struggling to hear the high notes in music or
| something. While I'm not deaf (and definitely not culturally
| Deaf), I generally can't understand spoken language without
| amplification. This often seems to surprise people, even when
| I've told them ahead that I'm hard of hearing.
|
| "Nearly deaf" or "mostly deaf" would be accurate enough, but
| it feels odd and I don't like it. "Severe hearing impairment"
| communicates my experience, and also the accommodations I may
| need from others, quite effectively.
| hobs wrote:
| In my experience this is pretty contentious depending on who
| you talk to in the community, some people don't buy into the
| deafness as a benefit and its definitely a political issue.
| disabled wrote:
| This engineer inventor changed my great uncle's life. My great
| uncle got scarlet fever at age 8 in the 1930s and had a fever of
| 108 F and nearly died. Because of nerve damage to his ear from
| the fever, he became completely Deaf at age 11. He learned how to
| lip read on his own and graduated high school when usually people
| like him would typically be excluded. Nothing stopped him. He
| even fished the fertile Pacific Ocean waters for Alaskan Salmon
| for a living, which was obviously extremely dangerous for anyone.
|
| Some of my best memories of my grandmother and her brother (my
| great uncle) as a kid were at my grandmother's house, whenever
| she had a phone call from her brother. Her talking to her brother
| via a physical TTY terminal with the phone handset in the
| terminal receiver was just so fascinating, captivating and
| interesting to see in the 90s as a kid.
| mabbo wrote:
| My grandmother had a similar history- illness leading to
| deafness that was completed deafness by the time I was born.
|
| The only way to talk to grandma was via the TTY, because she
| lived a four hour drive away. The phone would ring, we'd pick
| up and hear beeps. "Mom, it's grandma!". This seemed totally
| normal to us but in hindsight it must have dramatically changed
| her life, to be able to call people, to talk to her grandkids.
| How lonely it must have been before that.
| warmcat wrote:
| So many inventors who changed so many human lives just fade out
| of memory. I wish we had a wall of remembrance for all these
| people.
| fmajid wrote:
| Beautiful and moving story, thanks for sharing!
| app4soft wrote:
| _Paul Taylor_ [0] died on January 11, 2021[1]:
|
| > _"Remembering Paul Taylor, One of the Early TTY Activists."_
|
| > _Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc.
| (TDI) would like to send condolences to the friends and family of
| Paul Taylor upon learning of his passing.. Paul passed away
| peacefully at home surrounded by his loving wife, Sally, and
| their children and grandchildren on January 11. Paul Taylor
| leaves behind a legacy that TDI values and greatly cherishes._
|
| > _Paul Taylor began his TDI journey by forming the first local
| telecommunications advocacy group in St. Louis and was
| instrumental in establishing the 3rd relay service in the country
| which later became Relay Missouri._
|
| > _While in St. Louis, Missouri, Paul chaired a committee that
| created a manual on repairing TTYs titled "Typewriters Made
| Easy", better known as the Red Book._
|
| ----
|
| P.S. On September 22, 2020 _DEAF.Inc_ shared[2] a video _"Show-Me
| Deaf Spotlight: Paul Taylor"_ [3]:
|
| > _As the Missouri Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
| (MCDHH) and DEAF Inc. continue celebrating Deaf Awareness Month,
| we going to put a spotlight on a Deaf Missourian that made one of
| the greatest impacts on communication equality for the Deaf and
| Hard of Hearing. Watch and learn what Paul Taylor did in the area
| of telecommunication accessibility._
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Taylor_%28engineer%29
|
| [1] https://tdiforaccess.org/paul-taylor-one-of-the-early-tty-
| ac...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/DEAF_Inc/status/1308424049102450689
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgDWSTB1P_I
| jfrunyon wrote:
| TTY has been around since the 1800s. He did not invent the TTY.
| He invented the TDD.
| mark-r wrote:
| The article makes that clear, even if the title doesn't.
| gspq wrote:
| Thanks to people like him now we have a system like CaptionCall.
| You call a person or person calls you, the call is forwarded to a
| special phone number designated to you for free. A person types
| the conversation for you using AI to correct the errors. You are
| talking on the smartphone and looking at real time transcript.
|
| People with that disability now are doing interviews and getting
| jobs. Not possible before. It needs one time investment in a fast
| smartphone.
| bhickey wrote:
| My grandmother was deaf and we primarily communicated with her
| over TTY and fax. Before she had TTY she would call and leave a
| message, either on the machine or with whoever answered. In the
| days before widespread email and texting this was a boon.
| vermontdevil wrote:
| He was instrumental in the development of one of the earliest
| relay services in the mid-80's in St. Louis. The way it worked
| back then was more of a community collaboration among many
| hearing volunteers and the deaf community. The volunteers would
| work as relay operator, making phone calls for us deaf and
| relaying the conversation with us through TTYs. Some of the
| volunteers were my friends' parents which made for awkward
| moments at times!
|
| But it was very helpful in bridging the gap between the hearing
| and deaf communities in St Louis and the rest is history.
|
| Lots of respect and admiration for Paul Taylor as a very
| instrumental trailblazer for the Deaf.
| lornestar4 wrote:
| My father depended on the TTY for decades. My father is deaf and
| being the tech savvy person in the family, I would type on behalf
| of my father when communicating with his friends. Before video
| calling TTY was the only way he could communicate with his
| friends, other than driving to their houses. Reading Paul Taylors
| biography is really inspirational, and grateful for the impact
| his work brought.
| chews wrote:
| https://archive.is/1plfb - link without paywall
| nomel wrote:
| A long time ago, before cell data, when I was learning to
| program, I may or may not have used the TTY client that came with
| Visual Basic to abuse the "I'm paying for it with my telephone
| fees I might as well use it" federal TTY voice relay service [1]
| to have an operator read my emails and top slashdot news stories
| to me.
|
| [1] https://www.federalrelay.us/tty
| nomel wrote:
| It's interesting how the attitude of the tech world is
| changing.
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(page generated 2021-02-07 23:02 UTC)