marianne.masculino

I found myself watching American Inventor this evening mainly b/c the auditions were in Houston(and I was waiting for Traveler to come on). Anyway, I was blown away by one young man, Christopher Khanoyan, who is deaf. He came up with an invention idea for “The Voice Inside” which is portable voice-to-text and text-to-voice device that uses voice recognition software built into a phone/pda (sort of looked like a Sidekick or an MDA in the drawings) to facilitate a conversation between a deaf person and a hearing person.

Sorry for the blurriness of the video. I couldn’t find any online sources for video at the moment, so I did it ghetto-fab style and recorded the video on my camera.

It was really inspirational and probably one of the best things I saw on the show thus far. Don’t read further if you haven’t seen the episode yet

[Show Spoiler]

Chris’ invention was chosen as one of Houston’s finalists, but unfortunately did not win the $50,000 and chance to create a prototype for the finals. He was told it was a great invention, but some judges felt that $50K might not be enough to produce a fully working prototype or that it was not as mass-marketable. You know who did win? “The Wrapaway” - A dispenser for food wraps such as plastic wrap, aluminum foil, that is built in a drawer/compartment to be attached to the underside of your cabinets. Cool idea, but not as innovative or life-changing as “The Voice Inside” I really hope that Chris gets a chance for his invention to be funded and developed. I really do think it can be a revolutionary change for the hearing-impaired community.