Irwin Lee Brody1944 (Deceased)
Inventor and leader in telephone communications for the hearing impaired
Irwin Lee Brody was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1926, son of Harry and Anna Brody. He was born deaf.
From ages five to 15, Lee attended the Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) in St. Louis. He paid close attention to his teachers and studied hard. He learned to listen, read and speak, all without sign language.
Lee went home on holidays to visit his parents and two sisters only once or twice a year. In 1938, the Newark Star Ledger ran a photo of him titled “Youthful Traveler. “And a youthful traveler, indeed, is Irwin Lee Brody,” the caption read. “Irwin, who is seven, returned to his Newark home last night from St. Louis — alone, marking the fifth time he has made a solo journey either to or from the mid-western city.”
Afterwards, Lee attended Weequahic High School. From early on, he tinkered with technology. His first invention, as a teenager, was an alarm clock rigged to shine a bright light in his face to wake him up in the morning.
He then returned to St. Louis to enroll in Washington University, among the first students with severe hearing loss ever accepted there. A year later, he transferred to Rutgers University, again among the few deaf students ever admitted there, and graduated with a degree in psychology.
In 1951, he married Aileen Roslyn Sheft. Together, living first in the Bronx and then Fair Lawn, New Jersey, they had two children, Robert and Linda, and later, four grandchildren.
In 1969, Lee began to apply his mechanical ingenuity to be of service to the deaf community. He focused on teletypewriters, or TTYs, devices long popular in newspapers, the military and on Wall Street. Only 600 TTYs were then in use nationwide.
He devised specially constructed modems so that TTYs could be adapted to operate over ordinary phone lines. With a closet in his house serving as his office, he set about collecting, storing, refurbishing and distributing the TTYs to anyone suffering from hearing loss. They could then dial up anyone else to type messages on scrolling paper and hold a conversation.
In due course, Lee Brody helped establish a network that enabled deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans to communicate by phone with one another and everyone else for the first time. The TTYs spread throughout New Jersey and New York, then nationally. By 1977, 35,000 TTYs were being used across the country. They materialized in homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, airports, local police precincts, fire and ambulance stations, federal agencies, the U.S. Senate, even the White House.
People with hearing impairments thereby gained access to a large-scale lifeline to communicate independently — and instantly — over any distance. They could “hear” — and in turn, make themselves heard.
Lee Brody proved to be a pioneer in communications technology among the deaf community. It hailed him as a hero and honored him with awards. Bell Telephone accepted him to the Telephone Pioneers of America, only the 29th member since Alexander Graham Bell in 1911. He once received a letter of congratulations on his accomplishments from President Ronald Reagan.
Lee Brody died in 1997. The Stevens Institute of Technology held a memorial service for him, drawing 500 people to pay tribute. Gallaudet University, in D.C., a college for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, named a scholarship after him. Every two years, the Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc. gives an individual the I. Lee Brody Lifetime Achievement Award.
Over the last 15 years, his son Bob has written essays paying tribute to his father. Those pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times and elsewhere.
From ages five to 15, Lee attended the Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) in St. Louis. He paid close attention to his teachers and studied hard. He learned to listen, read and speak, all without sign language.
Lee went home on holidays to visit his parents and two sisters only once or twice a year. In 1938, the Newark Star Ledger ran a photo of him titled “Youthful Traveler. “And a youthful traveler, indeed, is Irwin Lee Brody,” the caption read. “Irwin, who is seven, returned to his Newark home last night from St. Louis — alone, marking the fifth time he has made a solo journey either to or from the mid-western city.”
Afterwards, Lee attended Weequahic High School. From early on, he tinkered with technology. His first invention, as a teenager, was an alarm clock rigged to shine a bright light in his face to wake him up in the morning.
He then returned to St. Louis to enroll in Washington University, among the first students with severe hearing loss ever accepted there. A year later, he transferred to Rutgers University, again among the few deaf students ever admitted there, and graduated with a degree in psychology.
In 1951, he married Aileen Roslyn Sheft. Together, living first in the Bronx and then Fair Lawn, New Jersey, they had two children, Robert and Linda, and later, four grandchildren.
In 1969, Lee began to apply his mechanical ingenuity to be of service to the deaf community. He focused on teletypewriters, or TTYs, devices long popular in newspapers, the military and on Wall Street. Only 600 TTYs were then in use nationwide.
He devised specially constructed modems so that TTYs could be adapted to operate over ordinary phone lines. With a closet in his house serving as his office, he set about collecting, storing, refurbishing and distributing the TTYs to anyone suffering from hearing loss. They could then dial up anyone else to type messages on scrolling paper and hold a conversation.
In due course, Lee Brody helped establish a network that enabled deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans to communicate by phone with one another and everyone else for the first time. The TTYs spread throughout New Jersey and New York, then nationally. By 1977, 35,000 TTYs were being used across the country. They materialized in homes, schools, hospitals, libraries, airports, local police precincts, fire and ambulance stations, federal agencies, the U.S. Senate, even the White House.
People with hearing impairments thereby gained access to a large-scale lifeline to communicate independently — and instantly — over any distance. They could “hear” — and in turn, make themselves heard.
Lee Brody proved to be a pioneer in communications technology among the deaf community. It hailed him as a hero and honored him with awards. Bell Telephone accepted him to the Telephone Pioneers of America, only the 29th member since Alexander Graham Bell in 1911. He once received a letter of congratulations on his accomplishments from President Ronald Reagan.
Lee Brody died in 1997. The Stevens Institute of Technology held a memorial service for him, drawing 500 people to pay tribute. Gallaudet University, in D.C., a college for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, named a scholarship after him. Every two years, the Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc. gives an individual the I. Lee Brody Lifetime Achievement Award.
Over the last 15 years, his son Bob has written essays paying tribute to his father. Those pieces have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times and elsewhere.