James Carlyle Marsters (April 5, 1924 – July 28, 2009) was a deaf orthodontist in Pasadena, California, who in 1964 helped invent the first teletypewriter device capable of being used with telephone lines.
Marsters married Joan Tausik, an artist who was also deaf (they later divorced), and went to work in her father's tie factory.
After two and a half years of applying, New York University agreed to admit him on a provisional basis with the understanding that he would receive no special assistance.
He also flew an airplane between two cities where he practiced, and he would claim his radio wasn't working right and ask air traffic controllers to use lights to guide him.
John Tracy, whose name is on a Los Angeles clinic for hearing-impaired children encouraged Marsters to become an orthodontist, and in 1954, after studies at USC, he began his Pasadena practice.
After communicating with Marsters, Weitbrecht developed an echo suppressing acoustic coupler in November 1963 for the purpose of using on TTY devices.
[3][4] They obtained old, salvaged teletypewriters machines from Western Union and the Defense Department and hooked them up to Weitbrecht's prototype modems.
Bill Saks, Andrew's son, said people don't realize it, but Ma Bell had absolute control over how her instruments were used, and there were draconian consequences for ... attaching anything to their devices.
Four years later in 1968, the Federal Communications Commission required AT&T to allow the use of the devices provided they did not cause problems to the phone company's operations.
Marsters served on NTID's advisory board and, in 2000, established a scholarship for persons with hearing impairment.
One early attempt at this did not last because of the cost and the noise the machines made, but the concept led to a requirement of a similar service in the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 which is available nationwide today.