Dr. James C. Marsters, Deaf Pioneer, Dentist and Inventor, Dies

[Miss-Delectable]

RIT - NTID - NTID News - Dr. James C. Marsters, Deaf Pioneer, Dentist and Inventor, Dies

Dr. James Carlyle Marsters, a California orthodontist who was instrumental in the development of text telephones (TTYs), died comfortably in his sleep at his home in Oakland on July 28, 2009. He was 85.

"He was an icon in my eyes," said Alan Hurwitz, president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology. Hurwitz considered Dr. Marsters a personal friend for nearly 40 years. "He was like a father figure to me. He gave me wonderful advice and guidance whenever I needed to talk with him about anything. He was a very kind man, passionate and always interested in talking with people. He had a great sense of humor and was a man of many talents and interests. He will be sorely missed."

His most outstanding contribution to the Deaf community started in 1964, when he worked with two other deaf men, Robert Weitbrecht and Andrew Saks, to advocate for changes that would allow deaf persons to communicate with TTYs from home and work. Before that, deaf persons were limited to communication in person, by letters or by phone with the help of hearing friends or family members.

Chronicled in the book A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell, by Harry G. Lang, Weitbrecht made history by calling Dr. Marsters with the first long distance TTY phone call on a traditional telephone line. Their communication was garbled at first. But after some adjustments were made, their typed words were clear and concise: "Are you printing me now?" Weitbrecht asked Dr. Marsters. "Let's quit for now and gloat over the success."

This teletype communication was made technically possible at that time by the development of an acoustic coupler that would carry signals through phone lines. The three men also worked to overcome the barriers to TTY communication established by telephone corporations, which at the time prohibited direct connections to telephone lines. They founded Applied Communications Corporation in Belmont, Calif. and obtained discarded teletype machines, repaired them and gave them to deaf people to use with the acoustic modems. They also educated the Deaf community about this new technology and partnered with other organizations to make TTYs a reality. Thick telephone directories of TTY users were eventually published and local organizations were formed to allow deaf persons to meet, communicate and disseminate the technology across the country. TTYs liberated deaf persons, allowing them for the first time to independently communicate with others in different locations.

"I look back with pleasure and satisfaction with time well spent serving the public and fellow man," Dr. Marsters once said.

"My dad didn't want to draw the attention to himself, he wanted people to know it was a team effort," said his son, Jim Marsters Jr. "Even though he was the last of the three living (modem developers), he would tell people, 'The glory is not mine. It was an effort of many.' He was really modest about it, but it was something he was really, really proud of."

Dr. Marsters, a long-time friend of NTID, was a former member of the college's National Advisory Group. He was presented with an honorary doctorate from RIT in 1996 and was honored in 2008 by having the modem he used for the first TTY call between two deaf persons prominently displayed at RIT's Wallace Memorial Library.

TDI (formerly Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc.) created the James C. Marsters Promotion Award for helping improve accessibility for people with disabilities.


"I just think about how he cared about other people - patients, family, friends in the deaf community," said his son. "When I was growing up, I remember he was spending a lot of time fussing around with those big Western Union teletype machines so you could communicate with another person who happened to have another machine on the other end. It started in his basement in Pasadena. But he spent a lot of time both in California and going to Washington pushing for government support for this program to make telephone communication more accessible to deaf people. I was really impressed by his time and energy he put in to help deaf people."

Born in Norwich, N.Y., Dr. Marsters became deaf as an infant. He graduated from the Wright Oral School for the Deaf in New York City in 1943 and earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. After graduating he moved to New York City and married Joan Tausik, a deaf painter.

He applied to dental schools but was repeatedly told a deaf person could not become a dentist. Undaunted after three years, he was eventually admitted to New York University College of Dentistry on a provisional basis with the understanding they would provide no special accommodations, his family said. He graduated with a DDS degree in 1952, becoming one of the first deaf dentists in the country.

After a divorce and a move to California, Dr. Marsters was admitted into a fellowship of orthodontics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, which he completed in 1954. He started a solo orthodontic practice in Pasadena in 1954 and continued until his retirement in 1990.

An accomplished pilot, Dr. Marsters had a second office in Lone Pine, Calif., where he would fly to in his private plane and provide dental services to their underserved community. Often those services were done for free because the patients could not afford dental care.

Although there were other deaf pilots, most would avoid flying to airports that required radio communication. Dr. Marsters, who spoke, radioed control towers and announced his proximity to the airport. He would ask the tower to give him clearance to land using signal lights, said his son.

In 1955, Dr. Marsters married Alice A. Dorsey, then the director of the preschool for deaf children at the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles. Together, they raised three children.


"They were an inseparable team through all of my father's accomplishments," said their daughter, Dr. Jean Marsters. "She supported him and was equally dedicated to issues of deaf advocacy and education as he was."

After 49 years of marriage, Alice died in 2003. He then moved from Pasadena to Oakland and remained active in that area's deaf community.

Dr. Marsters enjoyed fishing, sailing, soaring, genealogy, investing and roaming the country on family vacations in his motor home. He was a magician and appeared on a live television commercial in his college days.

He was active in both deaf and hearing communities - holding membership in the Masonic Lodge, Rotary and Kiwanis clubs and the American Dental Association. He served as vice-president of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and was founding member of the Oral Deaf Adult Section of the association in 1964. He also was the association's first keynote convention speaker who was deaf. He was given the association's top award, "Honors of the Association" in 1990 for "extreme dedication to and sustained efforts to the betterment of the lives of people with hearing loss."

"Jim's passing has prompted innumerable reminisces from A.G. Bell members signifying the broad and deep impact he had on our lives," said A.G. Bell President John R. "Jay" Wyant, who cited his "indomitable can-do spirit" and persistent leadership. "He and the other pioneers of his generation were trailblazers in expanding communication access for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing and their contributions touch us in many ways each and every day."

Dr. Marsters was a member of the National Advisory Group at NTID, where in 2000 he started the Dr. James C. Marsters Endowed Scholarship Fund to benefit deaf and hard-of-hearing students. He was presented with an honorary doctorate degree from RIT and in 2008 was honored when the modem used in the first TTY call between two deaf persons was prominently displayed in RIT's Wallace Memorial Library.

Dr. Marsters is survived by three children, Jim Marsters Jr. of Oakland, Dr. Jean Marsters and Guy Marsters, both of Pasadena, and two grandchildren.

Plans are being made for a memorial service in Oakland on Oct. 24 or 25. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions may be made in his memory to the John Tracy Clinic, 806 West Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90007, or to the Jean Weingarten Peninsula Oral School, 3518 Jefferson Ave., Redwood City, CA 94062.

Contributions may also be made to the Dr. James C. Marsters Endowed Scholarship Fund, NTID Development Office, 52 Lomb Memorial Dr., Rochester, N.Y. 14623.

 

[yizuman]

James C. Marsters dies at 85; helped establish phone use for the deaf

Deaf himself, he and two other deaf men created a modem that linked a teletypewriter to traditional phone lines and converted audio tones into typed messages.

James Marsters, in his Pasadena home, reads a printout from the technology he helped create. He conceived the idea and championed its use, according to the 1995 edition of “Deaf Persons in the Arts and Sciences.” (August 14, 2009)

James C. Marsters, a Pasadena orthodontist who with two other deaf men co-developed a teletypewriter in the 1960s that opened up phone use -- and the wider world -- to the deaf, has died. He was 85.

Marsters, who was the last survivor of the trio of innovators, died July 28 at his home in Oakland after a short illness, said his daughter, Jean.

With a physicist and an engineer-businessman, Marsters helped create a modem in 1964 that linked a teletypewriter to traditional phone lines and converted audio tones into typed messages.

The accomplishment brought profound independence and dramatic social change to the deaf community, said Harry G. Lang, a professor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, N.Y., who chronicled the feat in his 2000 book, "A Phone of Our Own."

"It was a technological declaration of independence for deaf people," Lang, who is deaf, told The Times in an e-mail. "It was a very important breakthrough in terms of access. This meant new opportunities to develop leadership roles, new types of employment where the telephone was no longer a barrier."

Although Robert Weitbrecht, a Stanford Research Institute physicist, did most of the hands-on work, he considered Marsters the invention's "founding father" because the orthodontist had conceived the idea, brought it to him and championed its use, according to the 1995 edition of "Deaf Persons in the Arts and Sciences."

With another colleague, Andrew Saks -- grandson of the founder of Saks Fifth Avenue department stores -- Marsters pushed to spread the use of the device, refurbishing donated teletype machines and persuading deaf people to give the new technology a chance.

Marsters "was the public speaker, the can-do man who wouldn't take no for an answer," his daughter said. "The three were a great team."

Their task was made more difficult because they had to work to overcome barriers imposed by telephone companies.

Bill Saks, Andrew's son, said "people don't realize it, but Ma Bell had absolute control over how her instruments were used, and there were draconian consequences for . . . attaching anything to their devices. The phone companies were the Goliaths. Those three gentlemen were the Davids."

James Carlyle Marsters was born April 5, 1924, in Norwich, N.Y., the second of two sons of Guy Marsters, a pharmaceutical executive, and his wife, Anna Belle, a nurse.

Marsters became deaf after a bout of scarlet fever as an infant and was taught from an early age to lip-read and speak.

After graduating in 1943 from the Wright Oral School for the Deaf in New York City, he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1947 from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.

Unable to find more demanding employment, he went to work at a New York necktie factory owned by his father-in-law, who encouraged him to study dentistry. His brief first marriage, to Joan Tausik, a deaf painter, ended in divorce.

Almost every dental school Marsters applied to turned him down, but New York University granted him provisional enrollment, his family said, and he graduated in 1952.

In dental school, he sometimes pretended he was hard of hearing instead of deaf because he thought it would lessen the concerns of his professors, Marsters later recalled.

Years later, he took a similar approach when he regularly flew his plane to Lone Pine, where he had a second office.

Announcing he was deaf invariably caused panic in the landing tower, so he would pretend his radio wasn't receiving properly. He would talk to the air-traffic controllers, who communicated in return with flashing lights, his daughter said.

On the advice of a roommate from Wright Oral School -- John Tracy, actor Spencer Tracy's son and namesake of the Los Angeles clinic that helps hearing-impaired children and their families -- Marsters moved west and studied to be an orthodontist at USC.

In 1954, he opened his orthodontic practice in Pasadena and a year later married Alice Amelia Dorsey, who was director of the John Tracy Clinic's preschool. He retired in 1990.

"If my dad got a phone call from his insurance agent, or anybody, I had to listen, mouth the words, then he would lip-read and reply with his voice," his daughter said. "Every single phone conversation was like that when I was a child."

So imagine Marsters' unbridled joy when he and Weitbrecht made history in 1964 by making the first long-distance teletypewriter call on a traditional telephone line. At first the communication between their homes in Pasadena and Redwood City was garbled, but the typed words were soon clear and concise.

"Are you printing me now?" Weitbrecht asked Marsters. "Let's quit for now and gloat over the success."

Weitbrecht died in 1983 and Saks died in 1989.

Marsters' wife, Alice, died in 2003.

He is survived by their children, James Marsters Jr., a chemist, of Oakland, Jean Marsters, a doctor, and Guy Marsters, a musician, both of Pasadena; and two grandchildren.

A memorial service is being planned for October in Oakland.

Source: James C. Marsters dies at 85; Pasadena orthodontist helped establish phone use for the deaf -- latimes.com

I remember those old TTYs before a digital TTD was created. They were big and bulky, but hella fun to use. I loved how loud they made when we typed to each other.

R.I.P. to the guy and many thanks for making our lives easier because of your invention!

Yiz

 

[Brian]

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