The Vidcom I (Video Communications
Device) from Atari Healthcare Systems.... huh? Thats exactly
what I said when the Atari Historical Society received this obscure, and
totally non-entertainment related device. After careful
examination of the unit, sure enough it had Atari, the "fuji" symbol and
of course the usually Warner Communications Company info and symbol.
This device runs on 6vdc @ 1.2ma of power and has a set of rechargable
ni-cad batteries inside of it. On the bottom of the unit is
a power jack and a connector port for a telephone connection for communicating
just like a hearing impaired teletype terminal. Basically
the unit has 23 keys on it with a shift key and audio key for beeps from
a built-in speaker. Each key a letter of the alphabet, a number
from 0-9 and a word. The words are "fine", "drink", "eat",
"full", "hot", "cold", "phone", "play", "time", "sick", "tired", "bthrm",
"hello", "bye", "what", "where", "when", "want", "who", "how", "help".
Based on these words and the basic functionality of the device.
It was summized that most likely what the unit was designed to do was allow
hospitalized individuals who were unable to speak due to injuries and such
to communicate, for someone who was deaf and/or mute and did not know American
Sign-Language to communicate and also for telephone communications for
the hearing/speech impaired.
After speaking with several engineers from Atari's earlier Warner days,
Owen Rubins, Allan Alcorn and Steve Bristow all replied back and explained
"We did some work on devices for the hearing impaired for health care/medical,
however we got out of that line of business very quickly".
In fact perhaps so quickly, noone till now ever knew outside of Atari that
such a device ever was designed or sold. The unit has a set
of extra large LED displays on the front of it to display words and simple
sentences. The built in speaker could sound a beep to get someones
attention so that a message could be shown to them.
This is certainly an odd and very unique item and hopefully more items
such as this will be unearthed so that the Atari Historical Society can
help uncover their mysteries and present them to the world so that yet
another piece in the puzzle of mysteries called Atari can be put into place.