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Good afternoon and welcome to GBH Journal. I'm Bill cafe. So now our glasses are betrayed blind people and something objects around them will be the topic discussed in the first feature on today's show. And your commentary on the news from the airline. Advancements in scientific technology are creating changes in our society at an enormously fast pace a pace which is often faster than people the better to cope with and understand the changes. But advancements in time to make they not argee are also creating amazing tools for people who may be handicapped. One such tool is sonar glasses for the
blind blind a blind people and sensing the objects around them. Has been wearing a pair of these glasses for some time and experiencing discusses with reporter David Friedberg. When I walk without these glasses what I do is I imagine I convert to what I hear and what I feel and sense and smell into a kind of visual image. I converted. But with these glasses that doesn't work I hear hears sounds all around me. It's almost a feel a kind of a kind of learning to operate very rhythm. I tend to feel as if I'm surrounded by music when I use these glasses as if the universe is sound and I have to make choices and this has to mean turning left or right or trying to find out what is this particular person treated. It has an excitement and emotionality to attach to it.
I don't understand but it draws me to them. Blinded by an accident at age 15 seems well on the road to mastering the craft of mobility. Since last March when the Massachusetts commission for the blind bought him with $2000 specially equipped a pair of glasses Mudgett has been exploring his surroundings in much the same way as does a bat with sonar. A small round transducer in the center of the glasses emits high pitched sound waves which bounce off objects in the immediate environment and then return to two tiny receivers each of these is attached to an ear piece that hangs from the glasses allowing the wearer to hear background noise as well. Different objects depending on their location and physical characteristics produce different sounds here for example is how modules would sense the presence of a metal door. Now listen closely for contrast as we cut to the sound produced by a North
Pole pine cracked. How it is these subtle distinctions that constitute a new language with its own diversity a statics and for a hardy margin its own profound meaning. As a Harvard graduate economist studying aids to the blind Magid was intrigued after first trying on the Sonic guide glasses last year. He has since spent three months training at the Boston College School of para Pathak logy a science that helps the handicapped to travel in one exercise his instructor would arrange two poles in a gymnasium leaving Dr Magid to find the place where they sounded equally distant and to form an equal lateral triangle with a third pole. He learned to do so accurately. Another skill is judging motion as objects cross the field of sonar. This was the effect as I walked toward and then away from the sonar glasses. The inventor of the sonic guide glasses is Leslie King and electrical engineer
now living in New Zealand who has developed a series of devices for the blind since World War 2. Officials from several states are observing Dr. margins progress to determine if his tricky family's mobility might have wide application. I sometimes drive for example in the middle of winter driving right across the street and instead of crossing I may have started driving so I can't so I'm way into the middle of traffic and that's got a disconcerting usually. Without these glasses getting back into I manage but it's kind of elusive intuitive process of making the most of whatever I sense around me. But with these glasses I can pick up let's say the the metal pole that usually at any corner of a street from 20 feet away so that I can you know as soon as I pick it up I know where I am and I aim for it so it gives me a lot of information about what's beyond
my cane which I use now and I still use with these glasses. Cain only reaches out to a couple of feet whereas this reaches out to 25 feet maybe 22 feet. To my way of travelling I mean making choices is significantly different. It's not always easy to interpret these things because the glasses are in stereo and they display all the things that come come at me and that can be quite numerous. It's also each of these objects varies in pitch so that a far object has a high pitch. A nearby object has a low pitch. In addition to these that each object has a different quality of sound a tree will sound soft leaves or sound softer glass world with one harsh and bell like that every every object has its own kind of quality and characteristic. Well all of that is coming into into these glasses and into my senses and it's. It. It takes a lot of a lot of effort
and experience to try to make sense of all of this. You've been at this now for only half a year. Is it fair to assume that with a couple more years practice your ability to discriminate between this a ray of sounds will be refined and you'll have a fairly clear notion of where everything is and what it is. I'm sure it will be refined but I see it just as more of a five year process. If I had been a musician I suspect that these classes would work better for me more quickly. A lot of the things are a matter of distinguishing one one sound from another which are very close together. For example if I walk along the street and I want to find a particular entrance doorway that doorway will probably have knobs are different from the doorway and next to it. And these glasses can generally do that distinguish between you know the
knobs that are significantly different from one another around not from straight up and down a little. You make it sound differentia but for me to hear that and to know that and to recognize and say yeah that's the you know that's the up and down rather than the round one. That's a tough thing. And but I suspect a musician would be it would be much better at it. It's affected my own musical interests so I've bought since I've worn these glasses I've become. I become kind of deeply interested in learning each other. I never had that it's I before but there's something about the pitch of the cello. It may be like you just did this sound kind of penetrates into me the way the glasses do it. But when I listen to orchestras differently I listen to the pieces more of the instruments much more much more aware of the instruments and where they are what are interesting things to listen to. Through your sonar medium I think I like pool sounds you know what that is is that the edges of things where there's a little
angle Earth reflects a lot of sound so the volume is high and that signal is very clear. And as I walk along past the row of windows on the lawn. Long city street which has a lot of windows right up to the wall or are a series of polls as they come towards me and disappear. The gut sound of coming towards me getting lower and lower in pitch as a get nearer of having two or three pulls in in you know coming at me. It's a fantastic sound. Is there a sense of symmetry to it the coming and going and coming and going and is that what's appealing. Is it a massaging symmetry. It is that I think that's very much the rhythm of it yes and the tone is the rhythm of the tones changing. Going deeper and deeper and another one coming it is a rhythmic you're right. But it also sounds very eerie. It has a strange quality of being somewhere else. A sound without a
location although it has a location it's ahead of me in it. A little to the right of that. It still has that kind of quality of of coming from nowhere having no spatial dimension using these glasses sometimes a little bit like listening to an oracle you know quite sure what it means but to me that's the that's the essence of music and the essence of of the end of an active life. And I would like to have it remain there. Could you tell me something of your feeling in walking down the street with that uncertainty. Well that it is a feeling of never quite being sure of having signals come and having a little doubt as to whether I have recognized it right. There's always that doubt as to what it means in a doubt as to what to do about it. That ever present with me. And I
suspect that that is almost inherent when one makes choices. Outside of pictures I know makes choices in the main sound where sound is a logic where motion drama is illogic. There is apt to be always that some doubt and I think what I'm sensing is that inherent difference between between. The tempo of life in motion and the tempo of something still like object. Do you regret being sightless. I. Know I Know I Don't. I sometimes get annoyed at being sightless it it bothers me I sometimes get my not seeing things. It's troublesome sometimes and it gets in the way of things. But I don't think I regret it. I might have I
did regret it when I first lost my sight for the first two years. But I mean I have know I've basically accepted and it hasn't made that much difference to me I think. I don't think life is any harder than than it would have been otherwise were more easy or different or significantly different. Have these glasses changed then. They make no difference to me I mill where I've always been a good traveller and they don't really they help me there and assist in making me make me feel more secure. They make me feel I'm better equipped at MIT. And I feel a little bit that I'm on the road to being entering a craft of mobility gives me a sense of of something that has developed over the years like a craft is it offers an interesting avenue of research and devices. I think it poses a very
important question that always exist on devices and in technology I think is at its most important role when it tries to enhance or how a person functions or what a person is when it's when the technology and the person kind of meld together. Here in the area of the handicapped that's very vital and important to be done right. Technology tends to be too practical and I think it has failed. By and large being very helpful to the handicapped a very very few could advance devices. These glasses are one of them. And the reason I think is that the inventors have neglected have not really understood the ethical implications of value implications the impact on on life and relationship between people. But all the way done on and on on the technological side and have not known how to integrate it in here is here is to me the when I wear the glasses I think that is one of the intriguing parties here is a device that does
both. It is it does a static fortuitously by accident but it doesn't matter. Could the sounds be made more a statically appealing could they. Present a music of the environment for you. I wish it could be. I know I have no clues as to how to do that but I think it could be improved in that direction. I have a problem though when I say that and even to to recommend it because I think that what they might do is overdeveloped is that it exists or. Or drop it because it's too difficult to deal with this steady component I don't think was really understood by the developers of these classes what they did was to make it least disagreeable and I don't think they build it up to be something terribly pink appealing interesting but here is a device that does both things. Sometimes I would just enjoy them and not use them very much oh turn them on and just kind of wander down a street. I like to do that in the woods especially when the sounds are very agreeable and it's
hard to imagine a pioneer in Sonar directed travel making his way across a bridge between practical technology and wonderous new realm of perception. Steven Friedberg in Boston. Journo Alliance comments on the week's news. The House yesterday rejected President Carter's tax reduction plan to put through one that is admittedly intended to make the complaints of middle and upper income people. The White House made a last minute attempt to shape it more toward lower incomes but its effort lost 193 to 25.
Ninety one Democrats joined one hundred thirty four Republicans to defeat the president's proposal. Speaker Neil joined the debate to blame the White House. If the administration had proposed this compromise five months ago he said it would have been adopted as the Ways and Means Committee Bill and sailed through. The tax cut vote it is for 16 and a half billions but for a family of four with income between 15 and 20000 He remounted only seventy five two hundred fifty dollars. The low income tax payer does get a break in the tax exemption allowed for each member of the family increased from seven hundred fifty two thousand dollars. The homeowner also is relieved when burdensome tax if he sells his house sale of a home is exempted from the capital gains tax or any increase in value below $100000. But this can be upon only one sale in a lifetime. It's for the homeowner not for the reaal teller. The capital gains tax on profits for the sale of stocks or property has cut down from a
maximum of 49 percent to 35 percent. The president had proposed tax cuts amounting to 24 and a half millions and then came up with a late compromise proposal of nineteen and a half billion. The treasury secretary had lobbied intensively for the compromise. It's defeat is counted a setback for the administration. The House also defeated in the same bill the so-called camp amendment that Republicans have supported to slash income taxes 30 percent over the next three years. The house limit lemonades from its tax bill the whole budget or tax reforms the president had proposed in January. A rope a poll just out finds more people concerned for tax reform welfare taxing than in particular tax cuts. The video also was the administration's proposal for what is called an inflation adjustment in capital gains to relate them to the Price Index. Some saw this as a first step toward indexing the whole
tax code and shied away from it is too suggestive of permanent inflation. On inflation the government reports wholesale prices rose half a percent in January which is the lowest rise of any month this year. It's been rising point eight percent. The lesson rise is credited wholly to a slight drop in overall food prices the first in a year. Chiefly some abatement of inflated meat prices that were rising at a 17 percent annual rate through the first half of year. The taxpayer Nagas the Senate Finance Committee which And the chairman Russell Long is expected to further cut the capital gains for stock holders and to make other special interest amendments. When it starts work on the bill August 21 long He's also chairman of the Senate Conference Committee on the energy bill that he's opposed for more than a year in the interest of the oil and gas industry of his home state of Louisiana. Tax is next only to inflation topped the public concerns for August. In
Massachusetts and those are taxes like most other political nose explodes in scandal. Frank Hatch Republican running for governor got court authority to obtain and publish the State Department tax a list of delinquent taxpayers. On Tuesday he published a list of those delinquent on passing over to the state the sales and meals tax they collected. This opens a double barreled scandal. Number one the state's own list shows more than 18 millions are withholding taxes. The more than 23 hundred employers have never turned over to the state. Number two the list is a mess. Many of those listed don't know or have paid up millions. For instance the affiliated hospitals of Boston are listed as owing three hundred forty nine thousand dollars. The compliance chief of the tax department admits they don't know anything. Six Terms are listed as a length. He says none of them is. Some firms dispute their listings. Our feeling is that the Commonwealth is
confused says the treasurer of a firm that he says has canceled checks for the hundred ninety eight thousand dollars it's listed as owing the state. Procedure or bookkeeping problems account for this explains the compliance chief bureaucratic jargon to bracket with prioritizing a word that a federal agency spokesman used on television the other night. We are prioritizing that project. The records of the department are not up to standard says Governor Rick Perry's new tax cheat. When he took over a few months ago but in the chaos of the department records of thousands of families that have kept many millions owed the State Department lists show over twenty two millions owed by sixty five hundred delinquent the new tax commissioner admitted to Lincoln City has increased 29 percent in withholding and 39 percent in room occupancy taxes during the caucus to caucus administration. The good this morning prints an entire page
of the second list compiled by the department that Mr. Hatch released except for the errors and disputed claims. These are people who have not just failed to pay their own taxes. They have kept the money they withheld from their employees paychecks or added to the room bills of patrons. The same with the list of course who kept the sales and Mills tax that hatch released Tuesday. This isn't just to lend currency this is larceny. It was never their money it late stole it. In some cases over several years with impunity only in the last few months has an Office of Special Investigations been set up and the tax department under the First Deputy tax commissioner. He says 100 persons have recently been indicted in the first three years of the recount this administration no tax indictments were indeed initiated by the department. The news had today new tax laced state confused citizens angry another tax issue this non larcenous has been gathering momentum.
That's over the new requirement of 100 percent assessment of real property. A coalition has been organized to work for an amendment on the November ballot to classify property for taxing at different rates. Its primary purpose is to exempt homes from 100 percent growth. Business organizations oppose the amendment holding that it will oppose impose higher taxes on business to make up for the savings to homeowners. Now why it has been most active in pushing the amendment labor organizations. Municipal and public interest groups such as Massachusetts fair share have now joined in a campaign for the amendment. Residential Property has traditionally been assessed at only 25 to 40 percent of value. Of course it ought not to make any difference if a 25 percent assessment results in a hundred dollar tax rate then 100 percent assessment should mean only a $25 tax rate to raise the same tax budget. That's the arithmetic of it. But arithmetic gets distorted in public finance
people further revaluation up and will open the way to larger expenditures. Homeowners have particular reason to fear a total re-evaluation at this time of flagrant inflation in real estate. Houses bought 10 or 20 years ago are priced for sale now at two to five times what their residents paid for them. They have assessed at those values many all residents could not afford the homes they own. Many can't afford them now or even at current assessments their tax bills have more than doubled in 10 years and then more than double again. It's the old resident who has most to fear. And if he's an all person retired at reduced income even more so it's he if he must sell its home. Who will be most relieved by exemption from the capital gains tax. With the congressional recess after next week and planned adjournment October 7 the House speaker has to line up the legislation he can expect this session to produce.
Speaker O'Neill hands his list announced to reporters this week omit some things that were musts to President Carter. Among them the civil service reform that the president calls essential to his government reorganization and control of hospital costs and airline deregulation. O'Neill list says his must tax reduction the long held up energy bill and a backlog of expiring law laws that must be reauthorized such as drug abuse and interest rates on savings account. Tip is against a lame duck session unless necessary to pass a natural gas regulation. Without that he says Congress would have only about a quarter of an energy problem in foreign affairs secretary Vance's Middle East trip. White House announcement that both Sadat and Begin will come to Washington September 5 to meet with President Carter who hopes to salvage their deadline. It says he's coming because the
United States has agreed to become a full partner in negotiations. That's a role it has avoided after now. In the New York newspaper strike of pressmen that brought shut down or all three papers Wednesday a federal mediator says both sides have agreed to resume bargaining Monday. The pressman struck of a work rules to govern no automation that reduced the number of jobs. The paper's plan to make the cuts by attrition and the dispute is over the time schedule for that. For Friday the 11th day of August 1978 that's GBH Journal no regional news magazine aired Monday through Friday at 4:30. Roger hurts his producer editor for The
Journal. Margo Garrison today's engineer and I'm Bill kept. Trying fairly hard not to fraternize with foolish folks but feel free to fend them off this or any Friday. For. Long.
Feel A. Little. The A.
Series
WGBH Journal
Episode
Sonar Glasses
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-83kwhpc4
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Description
Series Description
WGBH Journal is a magazine featuring segments on local news and current events.
Broadcast Date
1978-08-11
Created Date
1978-08-11
Genres
News
Magazine
Topics
News
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:03
Embed Code
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 78-0160-08-11-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
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Citations
Chicago: “WGBH Journal; Sonar Glasses,” 1978-08-11, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-83kwhpc4.
MLA: “WGBH Journal; Sonar Glasses.” 1978-08-11. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-83kwhpc4>.
APA: WGBH Journal; Sonar Glasses. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-83kwhpc4