[Trainer-talk] Happy 25th Anniversary to the Braille 'n Speak

Mon Oct 22 05:27:50 UTC 2012

I'll never forget meeting Marc way back in the day when he was working on
that basic interpreter. What an amazing guy!
bb

-----Original Message-----
From: Trainer-talk [mailto:trainer-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of
David Goldfield
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2012 10:07 AM
To: List for teachers and trainers of adaptive technology
Subject: Re: [Trainer-talk] Happy 25th Anniversary to the Braille 'n Speak

Beth,
Thanks for your nice comments as well as for the great service you are doing
for those students.  What you're doing is awesome.
I think the guy you're talking about from Levelstar is Marc Mulcahy.  I
remember working with him and he was and I'm sure still is a brilliant
programmer.  One of my great memories of him was a feature he implemented
rather quickly at my request which was the "paste file" 
command (plus-sign chord and f.)  It was very shortly before the release of
that year's update and we were very ready to finalize things.  I told Marc
that I loved what was added but the one thing I always wanted was a paste
file command and how I wished we could have it.  He said it was no problem
and suddenly it was there.  Anyone in product development will tell you that
you should never start adding features shortly before the release of an
update as it could break things and you'd need to do a lot of testing to
ensure everything was OK.  Marc added it in at the last minute and nothing
broke.  If memory serves Marc also wrote Quickbraille, a $49.00 Braille
translator which was very fast and quite good. Eventually built-in Grade 2
translation became implemented in all of the devices but I think that was
Marc's code for Quickbraille.
David
Beth Koenig wrote:
> I love the Braille N' Speaks. I had a 640 and 2000 when I was in 
> college. Then in 2003 I got my Braille Lite M40. The M40 still works, 
> but I never liked the speech on it as much as my BNS. Today I use a 
> Braille Plus and Refreshabraille from APH. The guy that started Level 
> Star and makes the Braille Plus got his start in programming for the 
> BNS.
> Today I collect old Braille N' Speaks and Braille Lites and loan them 
> to clients when their primary devices go down. I also start young 
> children out with the Braille N' Speak as they are so durable. We use 
> a lot of the ones made for the APH. The BNS Classic, and the BNS APH 
> Scholar.
> I have many units piled up waiting for me to get funds to buy the 
> batteries and bring them back to life :) Thanks, Beth Koenig 
> bethko at gmail.com
> (714) 699-DEAF (3323)
> Director of Deaf Blind Services
> Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center
> 1525 Durant Street 303
> Santa Ana, CA 92706
> http://www.deafadvocacy.org
> Health, safety, and productivity are the cornerstones of independence.
> At the Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center we provide the training and 
> services necessary for the deaf and disabled to achieve equality and 
> independence in all areas of life.
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Jeanine Lineback 
> <jeanine.lineback at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thank you David for this write up, down memory lane on the Blazie 
>> Engineering products. I remember this so well.
>> I owned a BNS original from 1987 until 1996. When that original BNS 
>> died I got the second generation BNS in 1996. I had that one until 
>> 2006, when it too finally died. The disk drive was also one of my 
>> favorites because of its usefulness. However, the dis drives were 
>> more finicky. Oh yes, let's not forget the Braille Blazer. I still 
>> have one that works sitting on a stand here in my home office. It's 
>> hooked to a Windows XP machine and I can still use it with NFBtrans 
>> and WBT.
>> I still miss my Braille'n Speak. It was simple to use, quick and for 
>> the most part a work horse without much fuss.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Trainer-talk [mailto:trainer-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf 
>> Of David Goldfield
>> Sent: October 14, 2012 9:25 PM
>> To: List for teachers and trainers of adaptive technology
>> Subject: [Trainer-talk] Happy 25th Anniversary to the Braille 'n 
>> Speak
>>
>> If my knowledge and memory on Blazie Engineering history is correct 
>> then this week we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Braille 'n 
>> Speak from Blazie Engineering.  This device was sold for 
>> approximately 15 years both by Blazie Engineering and for a few years 
>> by Freedom Scientific.
>> Here is what I remember regarding milestones from this time period.
>>
>> October 15, 1987.  One of the first if not the first update for Bns 
>> is released.  The unit contained just 45 pages of Ram equal to 180K.  
>> Files could not be made bigger or smaller and could not be renamed.  
>> Cut, copy and paste functions were not yet implemented.
>> March 1988.  Bns receives what was likely its first major update 
>> which included cut, copy and paste commands and the ability to 
>> recover files.
>> I believe this is also when the calculator and stopwatch were first 
>> offered.  Calc and stopwatch were a $99.00 option but eventually were 
>> offered in all revisions probably around 1991.
>> February 1989. Update introduced to offer commands to make files 
>> bigger and smaller and added rename capabilities.
>> Speaksys was likely available by this time; this was a DOS-based 
>> screen reader which allowed Bns to act as both a synthesizer and a 
>> keyboard for your PC, price was around $150.00. Speaksys was 
>> eventually revamped and updated with more features and became 
>> PCMaster, sold for $395.00.  I have a Braille copy of the PCMaster 
>> manual which I wrote.
>> July 1990.  Update was offered to add some voice inflection and the 
>> ability to write macros to automate functions.  Braille Blazer 
>> embosser was also introduced that year.  Also introduced was the Bns 
>> disk drive.
>> Prior to the disk drive you could either transfer Bns files to a 
>> computer or on casette tape using a tape interface device which was 
>> offered for $99.00.
>> October 14, 1991.  First revision of the Bns 640 was introduced.
>> Contained over 150 memory pages and a smart calendar to obtain the 
>> day of any date.
>> Summer 1992.  Major revision of the Bns 640 was offered including 
>> xmodem, Ymodem and Kermit upload/download capabilities.  Ymodem meant 
>> that multiple files could be downloaded/uploaded.  Also the ability 
>> to write programs for the Bns was introduced and several developers 
>> took advantage of this meaning that more external programs were 
>> offered including Braille translators, a macro recorder and many 
>> games.  Blazie Engineering eventually offered a checkbook manager and 
>> a third-party developer wrote a database called Braille Base.  Two 
>> terminal programs were also offered.  I think I have copies of nearly 
>> all of this software.
>> Late 1992.  Type 'n Speak was introduced.  This offered a paralel 
>> printer port, an alarm clock and the ability for users to update 
>> their units via flash.
>> Summer 1993.  Braille Lite 18 introduced.  I believe Windows Master 
>> was also introduced around this time, possibly in 1992.
>> This was one of the first Windows screen readers ever offered.
>> Braille Lite 40 came around probably in the summer of 1996.
>> I think the last revision to the Blazie line of notetakers was 
>> offered by Freedom Scientific in the summer of 2002.
>>
>> Blazie Engineering's products revolutionized the lives of so many 
>> blind users, myself included, by offering innovative and inexpensive 
>> products which were very intuitive.  Happy anniversary to the Braille 
>> 'n Speak which started that revolution!!!!
>>
>> David Goldfield
>>
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