DICK BOYDELL. Welcome to East Lansing. After all these years, you're finally here.
Welcome to East Lansing.
Of course, we knew when he was ten months old that he was going to be completely physically handicapped.
Very early on, we realized that Dick was our child, he was our responsibility, and we just got to arrange our lives on the basis that we got the responsibility of getting Dick as far as we jolly well could.
The jolly world could get him.
He obviously had a sense of humor, and his eyes would light up. You can tell by a person's eyes whether they're taking things in, and if they're happy, can't you?
In the very first few years of his life, the frustration built up in him was terrible. If he wanted the least little thing, if he couldn't make us understand what he wanted, he just went into such tantrums that I couldn't do anything with him at all.
One example I remember, we shall never forget this, was Christmas Eve. Late in the afternoon, he wanted something, so obviously he wanted something, he kept kicking his leg out, you see.
I said, is there anything wrong with your leg? He said, no. So I said, it's something to do with your leg. I knew it was something to do with the leg, you see.
Well, eventually we found out he wanted a Christmas stocking. He couldn't communicate with anyone except Jack and myself, and one or two of our family, and one or two of his friends.
The children could understand him far better than the adults. They could understand as well as we could, but nobody else.
It was difficult to tell whether things were going in, but you learn tricks.
The boys and girls will go home. The dog and the kitty will go home too. The boys will take the dolls.
For instance, if you read a familiar sentence several times, and you wonder whether it's gone in, you read that sentence again, but you change one word, and you get an immediate physical reaction from Dick.
He jumped. He knew.
You knew that he recognized the difference in the word, so we knew that something was going in.
We had these children coming in. We never knew when they were coming in, so we had our largest bedroom turned into a playroom, and we had a toy theater, and at Christmas we had Aladdin.
What Aladdin, my boy, home at last. I've given you up as lost.
Yes, mother, and look what I've brought. I rub the lamp like this.
Bring us a banquet. Put on the magic table.
Can this be really true?
Taste it and see, and afterwards I'm going to marry the princess.
In wishing you all good evening, I feel that I am speaking to friends and companions who have shared with my sister and myself many a happy children's hour.
Thousands of you in this country have had to leave your homes and be separated from your fathers and mothers.
That's it exactly. By the way, there was another thing our amphibian could do that was a new trick for creatures to have.
What?
It could make a sound in its throat.
Up to then, nearly all living things had been absolutely silent. The amphibians broke that silence.
A silence that had lasted for millions of years.
Yes. How queer it must have been. Those harsh, weird noises in the quiet of the coal forests.
Scientific program. Science is his first love. And this is where he went ahead. I couldn't have kept up with him.
I'm no scholar. But Dick was way ahead of me, you see.
I was working in London and he asked me to get him a book, The Analytical Geometry of Conic Sections.
Well, maths was my subject at school and I started to read it. I got halfway down the first page and I'd had it.
So when I got home, I gave it to Dick and said, here you are, Dick. From now on, you're on your own.
Dick couldn't do a thing for himself physically. He was in a wheelchair. He couldn't keep still. He had acetoid movements.
He could hardly hold his head up. He couldn't use his hands at all. He couldn't stand.
Well, with all those terrible disabilities, there was nothing to compare with a lack of speech.
That was his greatest handicap. We both felt that right from the start.
Okay.
This is a possum typewriter. For some 60 disabled people in this country, those few simple words have presaged the beginning of a new life.
Possum stands for patient-operated selector mechanisms, the brainchild of Mr. Reginald Mayling and his dedicated team of eight who conduct all their research, development, and the making of these machines from a small prefabricated building in Aylesbury.
To find out what a possum system means to one of its operators, I went to visit 33-year-old Dick Boydell, a spastic who, until he acquired a machine two and a half years ago, had absolutely no means of communication whatsoever and was entirely dependent on his mother.
Hello, Dick. Can I stop your letter writing for a moment? Mrs. Boydell, what has this possum system meant to Dick?
For 30 years, Dick had no form of communication whatsoever, except with his father and me, who could, with difficulty, understand his speech.
And then, he had the possum typewriter, and within two weeks, he wrote his first letter. And since then, he's written to scores of people, both in this country and abroad.
It can't be a possum. It can be a possum, sir. It could be like this one. Yeah, it could be a possum.
It could be like this one. Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, that's it.
That's it.
I think if people see communication as a political right, that vote means voice, and people who want to assert their political rights as human beings need a means of communicating with other human beings, and people who don't have that means, who don't have those tools, are being excluded from the body politic, are being excluded from the world.
You know, that's even more universal stuff, so instead of I-L-U-R-I.
Besides apple pie, we've also been working on some wheelchair portable talking computers.
Lately we've been calling them VOCAs, V-O-C-A, for voice output communication aids. So if you hear us talking about VOCAs around the laboratory, that should evoke a voice output communication aid.
Would you be interested in trying a system out yourself, a foot controlled VOCA?
I think that's really great that you brought your computer programs for the Apple computer, because that makes our conversation here a lot easier.
We can set our own Apple up in the deli for your evaluation.
You know why we call this the deli? It's D-E-L-I, for Digital Electronics Laboratory, Incorporated. Also because we have a stove and a refrigerator and a sink, and we take our meals here sometimes when we work through the night.
Something that I would like to ask Dick would be if he could describe some of the input systems that he's used with his past communication aids.
Maybe there are some possibilities for new input systems.
I noticed that you can use your foot very well on the Apple keyboard. You take your shoe off when you use that, and it's not very portable.
And that might be one place where we look at wheelchair portable data input systems that you could use for speech or for writing or making music or drawing pictures.
This is a communication board that is configured in the precise way that is now being used by a student in Alpena, Michigan up north named Tanya Lemkul.
She can say her name in a voice that sounds a bit like a man using a Votrax voice synthesizer, and by pushing words like teacher, principal, minister, and so forth, you can get any of the words that are printed on the board, as well as new words that she might spell out.
For instance, if you write B-I-T, you can get all those words with the word bit at the end.
So the buffer then can be cleared, and we can have some other sentence, which might be a whole sentence like, How are you? Or adding some words together.
Now, there are other ways to get words that aren't on the board, which we call strategies or pointers.
Steve, why don't you...
Okay, Dick, there are several strategies on the board that you can get at words that aren't shown.
If you push the word after, preceded by, you have, later, and if you have the word stomach, you push, make, make action with, digest, stomach, you get to digest.
So these strategies enable you to have more words at your access by just pushing one key.
The utterances that you are constructing are also printed out on a display screen, and we'll come over here and take a look at how it fits on the wheelchair, and then maybe you'd like to try this out with your foot. Would you like to do that?
Sure.
Okay.
You have a go at it.
Tell us something.
All right.
Hey, there it is on the screen, Dick.
You've got really great foot control.
All right.
Hello, Jim.
Hi, Jim.
I wrote a few big things today.
And what the electrode will pick up is a voltage level of the muscle cells, which is actually the difference in electric charge between the inside and outside of the cell.
And when this voltage reaches a certain threshold, it's going to stimulate the input into the computer.
We have a scanning program, and when Jim inputs the voltage by contracting his muscle, it will select a letter or a predefined word.
He has selected the row now, and he can choose a column.
Mary selected I.
The cursor automatically follows a preset pattern, and what Jim is doing is selecting the points at which the cursor will go down a selected row and then choose a selected input on that row.
By combining, say, three or four different muscles and say relaxing to and activating to in different combinations, we could interpret those different combinations of activated muscles as directly being a character.
So rather than waiting to get to the proper row and the proper column to input a letter, we could simply input one character after another or select some given function.
This would greatly increase the speed with which Jim or any other individual could input information into the computer.
Jim Rennick is a very bright young man.
He's one of our test pilots.
I met Jim in January of 1975 as he was being kicked out of his American thought and language course.
It was he had a professor who couldn't handle the fact that here was a person who communicated by pointing to words on a word board.
Not not being able to talk.
How long have you had this board?
About one, three, 13 years. What's going to be special to you about the about the new system they're building for you?
I can put into into it some P H R phrases
that I like to like to say such a can I P H O T.
Can I photograph you?
What do you mind most about the way people behave towards you?
I don't think I am as smart as they are. Are they wrong? Yes, sure.
There's going to be a battery pack on the bottom of your chair and I'll give you a battery charger you can take with you.
You just charge it every night so that you can talk all day.
Okay, here's the keyboard.
This is fun. Great, it is fun.
Hello, Dick. How are you? I'd like you to meet Jim Brooks in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is Dick Boydell.
Hello.
From London, England. Nice to meet you.
Mounted on the back of Jim's wheelchair is his component cabinet, which houses all of his parts of his system. In the background is the microcomputer circuit board,
which has on it 4K of RAM type of memory and some EEPROM. Also mounted on Jim's chair are some connectors, which enables Jim to plug in to a large computer terminal, enabling Jim to write computer programs.
This is an communication system which has been built for me to allow me to speak, but this is only the beginning.
I can imagine that within five years it will be possible to fit everything you see on my chair today in a case you can carry in your pocket.
If we can put men on the moon, why can't we use that same technology to free people from a lifetime of silence?
If we don't, we will be wasting our most precious resource, human beings.
That is fine, Jim.
Thank you.
Just one thing.
I find your two-tone voice hard to listen to.
Just as I have got used to one tone, it changes.
Yes.
When I have control over information, it will sound much better.
Okay. I know things will get better.
You can tape it so it won't swing down.
Dick, you can move over to the speak page, which you have it on, and then put something in the buffer.
Where are you going to? Hello?
Great! Yay!
I am using a program called Grand Rapid Encoder for phoneticizing utterances in any language that can be described with these phonetic codes.
There are about 40 or so that we use to make all the utterances in our language.
If I want to say, Dick, I can write D-I-K, a little pause at the end. If I want to make the D a little stronger, I write 3 D's.
If I want to put it together in an utterance, I can say, Hello, Dick, H-E-H-L-O-D-I-K.
If I want to go up and down in intonation, I can add codes for that, too. For instance, if I want to say, Hello, maybe we'll start off with some C's.
And then go down with some X's for the L and the first O. We'll use a shorter O, call it O-1, and then go up a little bit, another O-1, go up a little bit more, another O-1, put a W at the end, see how that sounds.
Let's hear that again. That goes in a kind of intonation pattern that we can then look at.
We can display on the screen a little bar graph of that utterance. Let's hear it again. It starts off sort of high and then goes down and then creeps up again.
In this way, we can put a lot of the meaning into the intonation pattern that goes along with the words themselves.
If you want to make the sound E, put a bunch of E's there. I did that with E's, didn't I?
If I write a bunch of A-H's, you get the sound ah. There's a computer that can just open its mouth and say ah.
This computer is the wizard of ahs.
Hello, John. That's great.
That's great. Although I probably would have put an ah there because I would say John rather than John.
I probably wouldn't put the H in. But am I my brother's keyboard?
Would anybody like to introduce us? Or with somebody?
Nick, I'd like you to meet Carol Fuzman. Michael Williams from California.
Nick Bordell. Nick Bordell. And this is Marie. Hi, Marie.
H C? This is the Phonic Mere Handy Voice.
This is a portable speech synthesizer.
This is a portable speech synthesizer too. I'm married to her.
Sometimes we are apart. So I have to use this.
This is actually a computer.
I can say whatever I want to with this.
Just by pushing these buttons here.
For example, 100. I'm using an artificial voice.
400 is? I need help. Can you tell me what's good about this thing?
I can talk to small children and people who can't read.
To be real human beings in the world?
It's giving you so much more power to do things.
And it would be a crime to not free people as much as possible.
Because government wants to save money.
That's all folks. Have a nice day.
I was thinking we could have you and Carol having dinner somewhere.
Here is my latest masterpiece.
You will have to read it.
I am using a special device to help me to communicate.
Please be patient while I prepare my responses.
I'd like to order a pizza.
Pepperoni and mushrooms.
And sausage.
I'm sorry I couldn't catch the address.
1250 Daisy Lane.
That's $9. Thank you.
How are you doing?
Keep the change.
I collect these things.
Thank you.
Hi Jane.
I've got somebody here I'd like you to meet.
This is Dick Boydell.
Dick has come all the way over from England to visit you.
To visit us at the laboratory.
Have you read Dick's story?
The story is Jane's bliss board.
It's called bliss because it has bliss symbols on it.
These are little pictograms that represent meanings.
Most of them have the English spelled outward under the picture.
One of these large squares is divided into 12 peripheral squares.
And then one central square that denotes the theme.
Jane indicates which square she is talking about by looking at it.
So her eye gaze and her head position indicate which one she is pointing to.
Jane, did you want to say something?
Looking over here, doing words one.
Cry, remember, want, think, have, go, love, hear, ask, ask.
Dick, you want to ask Dick a question?
Who? Feeling?
What are the feeling words here?
Afraid, sad, more, happy, good, lonely, together, angry, angry.
You're asking him if he feels angry?
You're asking him if he's an angry man?
Is there an angry man in the story?
Is he angry at somebody?
Is there an angry Dick if he's angry at somebody in the story?
No.
Is there another thing after man?
Is man right?
No.
Okay.
Ask, joke, talk, help, help.
A person who is helping him?
No.
I'll go through it again.
You tell me when I'm right and when I'm wrong.
Ask question to Dick.
Angry, man, not man.
It's about his story though.
When he was young?
You're asking if he was angry when he was young?
Angry about people who didn't understand him?
It is.
Is that it?
No?
You're angry at people not understanding you.
Not knowing that you were intelligent.
Is that it?
Okay, that's it.
That's it, isn't it, Jane?
Okay.
Great.
Okay.
That's the question.
Now for the answer.
I did get crushed three times.
How about you, Dick?
What do you have to say to Jane?
Looking over at your feelings?
Yes?
Afraid?
Sad?
More?
Happy?
Happy.
Over here?
Is it one of these words here?
I'm teaching our words.
Tell me if you see a word.
Feeling more?
You're happy to meet Jane?
Feeling more?
Is that it?
Feeling more happy now you've met Jane?
And happy to meet you?
That's a nice thing to say.
Do you want to say something more?
Something on here?
What?
This area?
What one?
Why?
Do you want to say why?
Why?
Up here?
Why are people different?
Why are people bad to each other?
Why do people not understand each other?
Why do people...
Is there a next word after people?
Here?
Why are people afraid of people in wheelchairs?
Why do people think that people who use wheelchairs are stupid?
Is that your question?
That's a good question.
People with handicaps in general.
Did I get the question?
Is that right?
That's a good question, isn't it?
I don't think that talking computers are going to solve all the people's problems.
I think it starts at a different level.
Maybe talking computers can help.
I think it starts at basic human attitudes towards other people.
Okay, you just take my hand.
Leslie, if you would hold that steady,
and we'll just have Jane guide the pen around, just to get it all the way.
Okay.
Down.
Nice and easy.
Okay.
Down.
All people in the strangest ways together.
And they're going to pull us together again, I know.
I'll see you in London.
Or in Lansing.
Okay.
Nineteen, take one.
The world of mass market technology is so exciting to me,
because I know that that's where the components are going to come for us,
for people to be able to speak.
We need portable devices.
We need microelectronics.
And I think that the motivation for that is coming through mass market products,
like talking automobiles or talking radar ranges, talking ovens, talking refrigerators.
And that's fine.
I have no problem with that technology and that mass marketing.
But as long as there are going to be talking radar ranges and talking automobiles,
let there be talking people first.
Okay.
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