About Interpoint NV, Belgian Manufacturer of Electronic Braille embossers.
From 1976 to 2025: 49 years of service to the Visually Impaired, providing reliable and
cost-efficient production of Braille documents.
In 1976, Professor François of the University of Leuven, Belgium, received a leaflet of the Flemish
organisation of the Blind, Licht en Liefde (“Light and Charity”), who were looking for volunteers to
produce books on a personal Braille typewriter (style Perkins Brailler).
At that time, Professor François was the head of the division for applied optics and electronics at the
department of electronic engineering at the University of Leuven (KUL). Computers and electronics were
new technologies and Professor François thought he could help "Licht en Liefde" by designing a robust
and reliable electronic Braille embosser, computer driven. To make the production more economic, he
decided to use rolls of endless paper and integrated a cutter in the embosser. This choice not only
avoided the cost and the waste of paper associated with pin-feed fan-fold sheets but it also opened the
way for a free choice of the page format. Here was the start of the Belgian Braille project. The goal of
the project was to make documents and texts available in Braille, for the same price and at the same
time as for ink print books.
In 1981, the first professional ELEKUL (Electronic Line Embosser of the KULeuven) embosser was
ready and it was used to produce the courses for the blind students at the University. It produced single
sided Braille, with a speed of up to 400 cps (characters per second) and up to 1000 A4 braille pages
per hour. During the 80's more and more schools, libraries and printing organizations in Europe heard
about the Elekul embosser and were interested in purchasing it. Overall about 70 printers were sold.
The Elekul featured a nice high quality dot relief, especially favourable for the children who were learning
to read Braille.
In 1991, Interpoint NV was founded to continue the production and development of embossers outside
the framework of the university. Gradually, people started requesting a successor to the Elekul, that
would be able to print double sided Braille. At the same time, Professor François decided to introduce
embossing in magazine style (4 pages to a sheet with a fold in the middle), while keeping the possibility
to print single sheet from the same paper roll. In order to achieve this flexibility, the design featured
sideways embossing.
In 1994, the first Interpoint 55 embosser was ready and it was installed in Vienna, Austria. Since then,
nearly 100 I-55 embossers have been produced and installed around the world. At Interpoint NV, we
continuously work to improve the design. New features are made backwards compatible so that older
printers can be upgraded if the customer wishes to do so.
The Interpoint 55 is designed to be a robust and reliable embosser: given regular maintenance (about
once every 1000 printing hours or 2 million embossed A4 Braille pages (or 1.000.000 double sided A4
Braille sheet)), it will last for many years. The first Interpoint 55 embosser located in Vienna is still fully
operational. Several I-55 embossers have now exceeded the 10.000 hours milestone and are still being
used.
Some of the key features of the Interpoint 55 include:
- embossing from rolls of plain paper
- using a paper cart to transport heavy paper rolls in a safe way,
- the printing head is all metal, no plastic is used,
- a self-sharpening built-in cutter will cut the sheet to the desired width,
- stable Braille dot relief,
- extended graphic capabilities e.g. maps and mathematical shapes, graphics can be integrated into the
documents before embossing.
For more information, contact Interpoint NV at interpoint@interpoint.be