By Myra Ross | From BayLines Express, August, 2023
This article comes from my memories and a few minutes of research. It is not an exhaustive history of NLS.
“This book is continued on the other side of this record.”
It was time to turn the record over on the big, heavy, gray, Talking Book Machine (TBM), which had remarkably good sound. It played records at 33 and 16 rpm (so you could play commercial recordings too). You had to lift the needle carefully so as not to scratch the record that came in the big black boxes with the straps. Then you had to put the needle down carefully at the beginning of the other side, not that easy for a little kid! Then you had to switch to the next record, being careful to put the one you just heard back in the manilla sleeve and into the box.
I think I was in first grade when I received my first talking book machine and my first book. I didn’t really need to listen to the books I wanted to read at age six. I had enough vision to read on my own. But in the ensuing few years, the books I wanted to read got longer, and the print got smaller. I became decreasingly interested in trying to read with my eyes. No one ever suggested that I learn Braille, and I didn’t identify as a blind kid so likely wouldn’t have been very receptive anyway.
The Library for the Blind in New York sent me big black boxes periodically. Sometimes I was interested in what they sent, and sometimes I wasn’t, so sent them back. I remember a book about a girl who played the cello. I played the violin. She associated pitches with colors. So did I. I had never known anyone who did that. I had a friend! Many years later, I learned that there is a name for this condition, “synesthesia.” I now know several others who have it.
Talking books kept me reading. My vision diminished over time, but I knew how to read through listening, which made reading for college classes possible. The big gray TBMs were replaced by smaller, lighter, blue ones. The sound wasn’t quite as good, but they took much less space! I had one in college although I didn’t use it much other than for pleasure reading, including some Dickins books that were more than fifty-five sides!
Ever evolving, in the 70’s NLS developed flexible 8 RPM records for some books and magazines, but I never liked them! Most of what I needed to listen to in college was available only on reel-to-reel tapes from Recording for the Blind. I listened to them on my Sony 105, a warhorse of a machine, which I was eventually able to connect to another large machine that speeded it up. The Chipmunks were always audible in my dorm room!
Varying the speed was not possible on TBMs, but it was incorporated into NLS cassette players that followed them in the 70s. Apparently, they made combination players, but I never knew about them. variable speed control (VSC) finally became available on TBMs produced after 1990 – who knew they were still making them then?
The NLS cassette players were truly portable, rechargeable, and much smaller than the TBMs. Tone indexing and a pitch restoration control were incorporated. Good-bye to the Chipmunks! And, what space-saving—each side of a record became one of four tracks per cassette. A twenty-sided book would take five cassettes instead of ten records. NLS sent them out in little green boxes instead of the big, heavy black ones.
I abandoned the use of the NLS cassette player when APH developed a better four-track, two-speed player with pitch restoration in the early 80s. It could record! It had cue and review that you could use while pressing fast forward or rewind while in play mode, a feature I loved. You could find tone index beeps quickly. No more hunting on records and scratching them. When recording a session with a reader, you could insert your own beeps. Ultimately, several private companies made smaller, Walkman-size 4-track recorders with variable speed. I used one at work in the early 2000s. Tape cassettes were a blind person’s warhorse for many, many years. Even though the tapes tangled and broke sometimes, cassettes were a huge advance over the records. Life was good!
Even though commercial audio books were produced on CDs, NLS never adopted them. They entered the digital market in the 20 aughts’, adding digital cartridges to the cassettes. The cartridges came in the even smaller NLS blue boxes. A Long book could fit on one indestructible cartridge—no more broken tapes! WOW! The player was even smaller and lighter. It had a USB port to connect with a thumb drive or computer. It had VSC, tone indexing, cue and review, one-touch jumping between chapters and later, bookmarking. You still had to order and wait for books, but the wait was shorter. How much better could it get?
And then, it got so, so much better! BARD was born. Instead of waiting for ordered books and magazines to arrive, you could go to the BARD website, download them onto your computer and either play them directly or transfer them over to other devices like the 1st generation Victor Reader Stream. In 2013, the BARD Mobile app enabled downloading directly into the 2nd gen Stream and even better, virtually instantly, into the iPhone. I am an avid stream user, even though the phone is much faster and has much better voices for electronic downloads.! Guess I just like those buttons.
I have now become an avid reader. (Let’s put aside the fact that some Braille readers don’t think listening to books is reading!) Bard doesn’t have everything I want, but now there are so many options. Between BARD, BookShare, Kindle, Audible, and others I don’t use, there is little you can’t find instantly. There is endless opportunity. It’s almost as good as wandering through a library or bookstore and impulse borrowing, or buying.
Having taught myself to read Braille as an adult, I download NLS materials in BRF format. I read a 300-print page young adult book that I downloaded directly from BookShare to my Mantis Q40 Braille Display. I wish NLS would support the Mantis. That’s my only disappointment with NLS in sixty-five years—a pretty good track record. Thank you NLS.