Evaluates a new system—Trigemina—that relates visual information to blind persons by tactile stimulation through a matrix of 10 x 10 vibrating rods applied to a postage stamp sized area of skin over the forehead. This “tactile camera” was driven by an electronic point scan which successively energized the stimulating points depicting two-letter words. Presented with only a single scan of each word, two blind adult subjects were able, 94 percent of the time, to recognize each of ten words they had previously been taught to identify by the tactile scan; they recognized each of ten novel words 46 percent of the time. The words were recognized most accurately at a scan speed of 12 elements per second.
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