SANTA CLARA, Ca – This is no typical toy story. It’s about a 13-year-old whiz kid Shubham Banerjee who built a printer for the blind, out of Legos.
“There’s 50 million people in this world today who are blind and 90 percent of those people living in developing countries and a normal cost for a Braille printer is $2,000 onwards,” said Banerjee.
The 8th grader built the Braille printer with a Lego Mindstorm kit. It costs about $350. It didn`t take too long for Banerjee’s vision to take shape.
“This took me about a month after, you know, trial and error,” said Banerjee. Still, his mother thought the project was taking too long.
“I just tested some random code out and it just started printing one dot that was the letter A. And I just screamed to my mom, ‘you thought wrong of me I can do this.’ It works now,” he said.
It didn’t take long for folks in Silicon Valley to notice. Intel, where Shubham’s father works as an engineer, made an undisclosed investment in what has turned into a real company called Braigo.
