Caryn Navy wrote here Phd during the active, early phase of the production of computer-based sensory aids products. The tale of how the thesis was written and what happened to the text is instructive.
In the early 1970's Caryn Navy and David Holladay dreamed of a computer-based device they named The Homework Machine, which would take literary braille and Nemeth code (braille math code) braille input and render inkprint output. At the time, both of them were MIT undergraduates and quite capable of pushing the limits of present technology. This was before the invention of the first microcomputer. It was David Holladay's guess that this device would require about $75,0000 worth of computer equipment to realize. At the time it was a discussion point each time Perkins braille output needed to be rendered into inkprint for handing into an MIT professor.
Caryn Navy wrote her math Ph.D. dissertation Nonparacompactness in Para-Lindelöf Spaces on a P2 tape based VersaBraille. Hardcopy was produced in print by her by typing on an IBM selectric with three changeable typeballs. David remembers heating up a paper clip over a stove to make different tactile marks on the top of the plastic typeballs so they could be distinguished from each other. Typing was a slow, painstaking, error-prone process. David woke up one morning and counted 27 wadded up pieces of typing paper under Caryn's desk that had been created during that night's typing session. Her typewritten material was submitted to a technical typist for the final "library" edition.
Caryn obtained her VersaBraille in February, 1981. She submitted her dissertation in June, 1981 to the University of Wisconsin. So the VersaBraille was quickly deployed to the writing task. The first bits of crude back translation of math using an Apple II was done in March 1982 by David Holladay. The math software went through several revisions over the years before it was released as an add-on to BEX called MathematiX. MathematiX was first sold in July, 1989. Considering the frustrations of typing a dissertation under these conditions, Caryn would have preferred it if David had done his inventing a little earlier.
From 1981 to 1984, Caryn Navy was a math professor at Bucknell University. The math software was deployed for her in two forms: one called NUMBERS which produced printed math output from input written on the VersaBraille. NUMBERS eventually was rewritten as MathematiX, an add-on the BEX. The other was called The Electronic Blackboard, which allowed Caryn to write material on the VersaBraille which ended up being displayed on a data projector for her class. Special markup allowed Caryn to control the flow of the displayed material with a series of simple commands on an Apple II computer bolted to her desk. As a sidenote: this technological innovation was appreciated by the Bucknell student body, twice the Apple computer in Caryn's classroom was stolen. To read about NUMBERS in the Raised Dot Computing Newsletters, see Newsletters 4, 11, 33, 37 and 76-77.
Only years later did David recognize his achievement in writing a back translator for Nemeth code that ran on a 128k Apple 2e computer. The back translation was done in a two stage process. First Nemeth code was translated into an internal, stack-based page-description language. A second pass converted the page-description material into properly rendered mathematical notation. David's initial work on Nemeth code translation happened about simultaneously with John Warnock's invention of PostScript and the formation of the Adobe Corporation. Click here for a view of the MathematiX sales literature.
In June 1989, David Holladay took the old VersaBraille tapes of Caryn's Ph.D. dissertation, and converted the text to an Apple 2 disk. He modified the text to add the correct markup to be suitable data for MathematiX. Mostly this process was adding "start math context" and "start literary context" markup commands. These files, along with the Apple 2 software were then converted into PC media so they could operate in the AppleWin Apple 2 emulator running under Windows.
Caryn's thesis has gone through many transformations:
