R. Orin Cornett (November 13, 1913 – December 7, 2002) was an American physicist, university professor and administrator, and the inventor of a literacy system for the deaf, known as Cued Speech.
R. (Richard) Orin Cornett was born in Driftwood, Oklahoma, a now unincorporated town near the Kansas border located in Alfalfa County, on November 14, 1913.
[1] While serving there, he devised a phonemic system which rendered the English language visually, rather than acoustically, to address the issue of deaf literacy.
[2] In 1971 his job title was changed to: "Vice President for Long Range Planning and Public Services" [3] and during the 1970-1971 academic year he was the acting director of the Model Secondary School for the Deaf on the Gallaudet College campus.
[7][8] Of the system, Cornett stated, "A few months of study convinced me that the underlying cause of their (deaf persons) reading problem was the lack of any reasonable way to learn spoken language, without which they could not use speech for communication, become good lipreaders, or learn to read (as opposed to being taught the recognition of each written word).