By 1951 about 30,000 Talking Book machines were owned by the Library of Congress and loaned to listeners who were blind through 54 local distributing agencies. At that time, the Library of Congress was purchasing 10,000 new machines annually, 5,000 of them to replace very old models, and the other 5,000 to be issued to new users. AFB and the American Printing House for the Blind also sold machines at cost to those blind or visually impaired individuals who preferred to own their machines. Increasingly, commercial businesses such as Sandwick-Bowen—whose advertisement is displayed on this page—took over the manufacture of Talking Book machines.