In case you missed week one's post where we explained the purpose of these weekly posts, we'll recap. Arcon is in it's 60th year of business. We'll officially celebrate our 60th anniversary in 2025. In a lead up to that and as an homage to the innovation that Arcon represented in 1965 - an engineering firm specializing in forensic investigations of electrical, structural and mechanical failures and fire origin & cause investigations - we plan to share other uniquely Canadian innovations and inventions that have appeared during the past 60 years.

This week we bring you computerized braille. In the late 1960s, Roland Galarneau, from Hull Quebec, invented the Converto-Braille, a computerized printer capable of transcribing text into Braille at 100 words per minute.  This was a massive innovation for visually-impaired people as it expanded the availability of textbooks and other written materials that they could read. Subsequent development took this technology to the world of computers and was a precursor to the Braille software in use today.