James Marsters, Inventor of TTY

James C. Marsters' greatest feat was to conjure the text telephone, or TTY, which for the first time gave deaf people independent access to the telephone via teletype machines. It was the first in a string of technologies that help deaf people communicate. Marsters, who died July 28 at 85 years old, defied the isolation many deaf people of his generation experienced. He willed himself into the mainstream long before there were technologies and programs to help deaf people do so. In the days before TTYs, "deaf people were dying of heart attacks because they could not find help in time to make emergency calls," Harry G. Lang, author of "A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell," wrote in an email. Mr. Lang, who is also deaf, calls the TTY "a technological declaration of independence."