My fresh­man year at MIT, for some HASS I was tak­ing, I had to retrieve a Boston Globe arti­cle from micro­film. I remem­ber sit­ting down next to the micro­film reader, dis­cov­er­ing that it was right beside a famous IBM Model D braille type­writer. My first reac­tion was, “Wow, MIT has a braille typewriter?”

This evening I found myself search­ing for a book in the “B” sec­tion (!!!) of the Human­i­ties Library when I stum­bled upon a dusty type­writer cart with a deac­ti­vated sticker on it. It was, of course, the very same type­writer, whose exis­tence I had com­pletely writ­ten off in my mind. “Wow, MIT still has a braille typewriter?”

The IBM Model D, by the way, was a break­through in its time (late 1960′s). It was the first mass-produced elec­tric braille type­writer. The “elec­tric” part is a big deal because it seems the man­u­als required a good deal of pound­ing to make a good impres­sion. It was also unique in that, due to its QWERTY key­board, one could pro­duce Grade 1 braille doc­u­ments with­out any train­ing beyond tra­di­tional sec­re­tar­ial skills (e.g. typing).