Re: Resurrecting the Optacon

From: JBliss@aol.com
Date: Mon Feb 26 1996 - 05:52:33 PST


Dear Bill,

We're in agreement on multifinger Optacon displays. Actually our results
showed that initially two fingers were worse than one. It was only after
considerable practice that two fingers were as good as one. Our speculation
was the user had learned to ignore the second finger.

Regarding the Optacon vibration frequency, it was a mystery as to why the
vibration frequency in the Optacon worked so well. A graduate student of
mine studied two point threshold as a function of frequency and found that
the Optacon vibration frequency was actually ideal. This contradicts
neurological findings which indicate that receptive fields at this vibration
frequency are larger than at lower freqencies. I hosted a conference with
some of the key neurological researchers to discuss this point, but no
satisfactory explanation was ever made.

Jim Bliss

Jim Bliss



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