When Genensky was born, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had a requirement that all newborn babies receive drops of dilute silver nitrate in both eyes, to prevent the possible passage of syphilis from mother to child.
Three months later he was treated by Dr. Frederick H. Verhoeff, a highly regarded specialist in ophthalmology, who performed partial iridectomy on both eyes (thinking that glaucoma would otherwise occur).
He entered Harvard University in 1950 and received an MS degree in mathematics in 1951, after which he worked for the US Bureau of Standards as a mathematician in the Fire Protection Section of the Building Technology Division.
He (along with two colleagues) did make the move, and in 1978 the Center for the Partially Sighted began providing services as part of the hospital's operations (it became an independent organization in April 1983).
During his first year at the regular high school Genensky took his father's World War I binoculars to his geometry class, and realized he could use them to identify circles and triangles on the blackboard.
While working at RAND a co-worker, Paul Baran found Genensky slumped over an inclined drawing board while writing a company project.
[4] A January 1971 article in Reader's Digest described the system ("Sam Genensky's Marvelous Seeing Machine"), which brought a flood of interest, and which sparked in Genensky a desire to create a center that would provide sight-impaired persons the necessary services to meet their special needs, and to encourage them to use all their senses (including any available eyesight) to remain an integral part of the human society.
Genensky was proud of an achievement which he claims helps vision-impaired daily while negotiating public areas: he encouraged supervisors of California's public buildings to add raised circular or triangle-shaped markings to women's or men's restroom doors, respectively, so by touch a person can determine which restroom is for which gender.