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Optophone

en.wikipedia.org

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Re: Optophone

#11

Post by flopsamjetsam »

Animats wrote: post #10

The concept of measuring how much ink appears as the text passes a vertical slot came back again in the 1950s. MICR codes, the numbers that appear on checks, are read that way. [1] Or at least were in the original implementation. The ink was magnetized and the paper went past a one-track magnetic tape head. The waveform for each symbol is unique. The recognizer is more like a bar code reader than an OCR system. There…

Fascinating, I never realised that's how they work. I found a list of characters and their waveforms. [1]

[1] https://smartcheque.com.au/general-info/about-micr/micr-char...

Re: Optophone

#12

Post by userbinator »

Later models of the Optophone allowed speeds of up to 60 words per minute, though only some subjects are able to achieve this rate

Looking at the speeds with which people can communicate with Morse, I suspect that the skill of effectively turning your brain into a UART is something that improves with much practice.

Re: Optophone

#16

Post by tdeck »

quizzical8432 wrote: post #7
rtkwe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could get faster with a language actually meant to be 'sung' instead of this rough translation of english characters into audio.

My first thought was: “oh, that’s an interesting concept, I wonder how hard it would be to learn?” Then I saw the frequency/time graph, and realised that didn’t seem to have been a consideration at all. This was obviously designed by a sighted person who cared more about what the pictures looked like! Blind person: “But how do I know which letter is which?” Designer: “Oh, that’s easy! Just look at the picture!” I lov…

IIRC from reading the paper years ago, they chose the tones for each row in the column so they would provide distinct combinations of concordant and discordant sounds.

Re: Optophone

#17

Post by alnwlsn »

tdeck wrote: post #15

There are some modern systems that convert whole frames from a camera to sound. Apparently some people have learned to interpret information from them but it seems impractically difficult. E.g. https://www.seeingwithsound.com/

This must be the one I remember playing with around 2010. It used to be a java applet and you could draw in it like a paint program to make interesting sounds. After messing with it for a while I could kind of tell what was going on but not really.

Kind of reminds me of Slow Scan TV - I feel like with enough practice, you could tell what the image looked like without using a decoder.

Re: Optophone

#18

Post by Cordiali »

zaius wrote: post #4

After reading Hail Mary, I wondered how reasonable it was for someone to truly be able to understand a language based in tones / chords alone. Maybe 60 words per minute would be enough to communicate but it sure would be frustrating.

You might be interested to read about whistled languages, which is pretty close to that idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistled_language

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