Robert Haig Weitbrecht (1920-1983) was an engineer at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...

and later the spin-off company

Weitbrecht Communications Weitbrecht Communications, Inc. (WCI) is a Santa Monica, California company that specializes in providing products for deaf people. The company was founded as Applied Communications around 1965 by Robert Weitbrecht and James C. Marsters based on W ...

who invented a type of a modem (a form of

acoustic coupler In telecommunications, an acoustic coupler is an interface device for coupling electrical signals by acoustical means—usually into and out of a telephone. The link is achieved through converting electric signals from the phone line to sound a ...

Early life and education

Weitbrecht was born in

Orange, California Orange is a city located in North Orange County, California. It is approximately north of the county seat, Santa Ana. Orange is unusual in this region because many of the homes in its Old Town District were built before 1920. While many other ...

in 1920. He was born Deaf and his education was mainstream for the most part with the exception of acquiring some signing and lip-reading skills from a Deaf school early on. He went on to earn a B.S. in Astronomy from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1942 and finished his formal education with a M.S. in Astronomy from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

in 1957.

Career

Weitbrecht was initially a physicist at the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California (now Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), then an electronics scientist at the U.S. Naval Air Missile Test Center. For his efforts, he earned the United States Navy's Superior Accomplishment Award. Even in his high school days, Weitbrecht was interested in amateur radio and used radiotelegraph to communicate with fellow radio operators around the country. In 1964, this love for communication came together with the need to interact with a colleague who could not operate an amateur radio. To solve this problem, Weitbrecht created a device that used the public telephone system to achieve communication: the

teletypewriter A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Initia ...

(TTY). After being approached by James C. Marsters, Weitbrecht came up with a revised design for the

(a type of

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

), which used

echo suppression Echo suppression and echo cancellation are methods used in telephony to improve voice quality by preventing echo from being created or removing it after it is already present. In addition to improving subjective audio quality, echo suppression ...

. In 1964, Marsters and Weitbrecht adapted used teletypewriter equipment, and Weitbrecht made the first successful teletypewriter phone call from one deaf person to another. It took several tries, until Weitbrecht's words appeared clearly: "Are you printing now? Let's quit for now and gloat over the success." Today, this type of device is known as a

telecommunications device for the deaf A telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) is a teleprinter, an electronic device for text communication over a telephone line, that is designed for use by persons with hearing or speech difficulties. Other names for the device include t ...

Personal life

Weitbrecht earned a pilot's license in 1967. Weitbrecht died after being involved in an automobile accident in 1983.

References

External links

Finding Aid to the Robert Weitbrecht papers, 1931-1982

The Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Weitbrecht, Robert 1920 births 1983 deaths People from Orange, California SRI International people Manhattan Project people Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Deaf people from the United States 20th-century American inventors