2014.1.2

PowerBraille 65 Refreshable Braille Display

Blazie, Deane; Blazie Engineering

Flat, rectangular chassis, dark gray enameled aluminum; four rubber feet; top features a recessed rubber pad on rear 2/3 of surface; in front of pad is slightly raised ridge; directly on top of the ridge are four long plastic buttons or bars used to move the display; in front of this ridge and behind the braille cells are 65 arrow shaped cursor routing buttons, used to move the computer's cursor directly to a particular location on the display; in front of the routing buttons is the 65-cell braille display; just below the braille display cells is a black plastic tactile ruler with indicator dots below each braille cell; flanking the braille display on both sides are pairs of small black square buttons, display backward is to the left and display forward is to the right; controls on the front panel: at far left is switch which toggles between 6-dot and 8-dot Braille; to right is switch two, which toggles text attribute codes; to the right is the left rocker, which moves the system cursor up and down; in the middle of the front panel are two buttons, one shaped convex, the other concave; the convex button is used as the computer’s enter key when in DOS applications; the concave button is used as the Link/Unlink key when in DOS applications; to the right is the right rocker, which moves the Braille display up and down; to the right is switch 3, which enables a split display between two devices; at the far right of the front panel is switch 4, which switches the active part of the display when using a split display; bottom surface has a battery access panel and the product label, serial number TB69810-001M; rear panel controls: on/off rocker power switch, 2.5mm DC power cord jack, mini-RCA speaker out jack, two mini-RCA IN speaker jacks, 5-pin keyboard B in and out jacks, 9-pin male DTE serial port, 25-pin female parallel port, 25-pin male parallel port, 9-pin female serial DCE port, five pin male and female keyboard A in and out jacks.

ca. 1998

Blazie Engineering

Forest Hills, MD

Telesensory introduced its PowerBraille line of refreshable braille displays in 1994. Notes from Deane Blazie, "Blazie Engineering purchased the blindness division of Telesensory Systems (TSI) in about 1998. It had been in the TSI product lineup for a few years and we sold a lot of them including the 65 which was a strange size. Most displays of that era were 40 and 80 cells. The 65 was a compromise between price and ease of use.
We sold Blazie Engineering in 2001 and Freedom Scientific came out with a new line of displays shortly after that."

Gift of the Carroll Center, 2014.1.