New Russian Orthography

[ROEBUCK, AIMEE M. (JSC-AH)]

One of my students has a English-Russian/Russian-English dictionary from
1944 edited by M.A. O'Brien.  It uses "New Official Orthography", which
seems to put an apostrophe in place of the hard sign in the Russian word.
An example of this is ob'qsnit; (ob'jasnit') instead of ob=qsnit;
(ob"jasnit').  Does anyone have information about if and/or when this
orthography was used widely?

Thank you in advance,
Aimee Roebuck
aroebuck at ems.jsc.nasa.gov