Caption Max

When people admire the cochlear implant, clearly visible on my bald pate, they often ask, “Isn’t that controversial?” Controversy sells newspapers, books, and now blogs.

For this Deaf History Month blog, I’d like to talk about someone who wasn’t controversial. The late Jim Marsters was active in both deaf and hearing communities, with many friends in each. An orthodontist who read lips and spoke, he communicated so well with his patients that some were not aware he was deaf.

I may not consider him controversial, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t an advocate of change. Those of you old enough to remember “Ma Bell” will know that at one time, Bell owned the phones in your house and was extremely proprietary about what you could do with them. Back in the late fifties, a fellow invented an attachment to help people talk without others overhearing. Bell went after him because they viewed that as an imposition on their system. So imagine their consternation when Marsters and his friends Robert Weitbrecht, a Stanford University physicist, and Andrew Saks, an electrical engineer, invented the acoustic coupler now known as the modem.

Marsters drove the development of the coupler, which made the TTY (teletypewriter or teletype) possible, and then later traveled to Congress and all over the country to push for its use because he wanted to be able to use the telephone. At first, deaf people only used the couplers to connect to teletype machines and talk with other deaf people and their families. But Marsters didn’t want to stop there. He felt there had to be a way for deaf people to use the phone to talk with anyone. So along with Weitbrecht and Saks, he lobbied for communications policies that eventually made the modern relay services possible.

He also decided he wanted to fly planes. As Henry Kisor points out in his blog, Marsters learned that less than 10 percent of American airspace under 18,000 feet requires the use of radio. Small airports do not have control towers. This meant that he could legally fly without using a radio. On the occasions when an airport expected radio communications, he would simply message that his receiver was out (some commentators say he “fibbed,” but does a radio’s receiver work if you can’t use it?), and they would follow standard visual procedures to direct his landing.

Let’s step back and look at these accomplishments for a moment. Today, most people understand that deaf people have a right to free relay services, closed captions on television, and other access issues. We’re operating under the well-developed concept that television and telephone network providers who use federally regulated transmission spectrum have certain obligations in exchange for the ability to use that spectrum. (See: Telecommunications Act of 1996 and related legislation.)

But in the 1960s, the ADA and the Telecommunications Act were years away. Yet Marsters was no entitlement victim. He had a thriving practice. He flew his own plane. He invented the TTY, an achievement most people would consider to be sufficient for a lifetime. But Marsters continued to push for more and better telecommunication options, because he didn’t believe in barriers for himself – or anyone else.

Now let’s segue to the present. The latest initiatives to remove barriers are the proposed 21^st Century Telecommunications Act (HR 3101) and the FCC’s development of the National Broadband Plan. In hearings last year, wireless carriers and phone manufacturers spoke against the 21^st Century proposals, claiming that the accessibility requirements (for the blind, mobility impaired, and others, as well as deaf consumers) were too onerous.

Last I heard, this year they have shown a greater willingness to accommodate within the framework of HR 3101. But this comes after “enduring” years of resolute pressure from activists and seeing the list of House cosponsors grow by the day.

Such change is only possible because of leading visionaries like Jim Marsters, an uncontroversial radical.

Jay Wyant, CEO, Remotocom, jwyant@remotocom.com

Wyant is also President of the Board of the Alexander Graham Bell Association of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (AG Bell).

For more on Marsters:

1. Harry G. Lang, “A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell”

2. http://www.ntid.rit.edu/media/full_text.php?article_id=963

3. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125080635093047711.html

4. http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/08/23/Dr-James-Marsters-inventor-of-TTY-dies/UPI-69341251059847/

5. http://ccosd.org/2009/08/30/farewell-tty-inventor-dr-james-marsters/