Rachid Shell, inventor of TV for blinds, dies

Rachid Shell, 61, an Algerian born in Paris and naturalized US citizen, inventor of the screens for the blind, died yesterday in New York, for unknown reasons.

In early 1984, Rachid popularized the screens to blind people, saying it had invented a new system. By low frequency waves, the images came directly to the brain client and did not even need to connect the TV to the mains.

All this caused no little controversy and accusations of fraud.

Success and controversy.

Some TVs in your company Visionics seemed limited to older models owned by Philips, with a remote control in Braile. No less than five hundred thousand devices were sold worldwide in those 80 years.

From the beginning there were discrepancies. The blind journalist Michael Skeptical, he snapped at Shell, in a press conference: “You’re a jerk, this sucks and can not see anything.”

Others, however, claimed the miracle, as Ryan Mate, saying to see everything clearly: ” I have never seen so well God bless America!“.

As they were distributing apparatus, various associations for the blind perpetrated numerous attacks on shops and even against Rachid, who always defended his idea.

It is said that the last years of his life, Rachid himself became blind due to continuous exposure to conventional screens. It seems that finally admitted: “It’s true, there’s nothing there, dammit!” R.I.P.