Optacon - Funding For Optacon Research and Development

Funding For Optacon Research and Development

After Linvill and Bliss decided to join forces to work on Linvill’s vision of a reading machine, it became apparent that they needed to obtain funding for this objective, rather than the objectives of Department of Defense and NASA which had provided the funding up until that time. As a start, Bliss suggested that they visit Dr. Murphy at the VA, since he was the only then currently active government source of reading machine funding. However, Bliss knew that the research on “Optophone-like” reading machines had created negativity toward this “direct translation” approach because of the slow reading rates obtained. To counter this negativity, Bliss programmed an SRI computer to present text in a moving belt display, similar to that in Times Square New York City, on both his air jet stimulator array and on the Stanford bimorph array. Linvill’s blind daughter, Candy, was then the subject who attempted to learn to read the text presented in this fashion. After several hours of training and practice, Candy was reading in excess of 30 words per minute. Bliss and Linvill felt this computer driven test was a valid simulation of the reading machine they proposed to develop. They felt the 30 words per minute reading rate achieved in a short time by Candy proved that if such a reading machine were developed, it would be useful. They didn’t know what the upper limit of reading speed would be, but had hopes that 100 words per minute could be achieved, since this was typical Braille reading rate.

Armed with this result, Bliss and Linvill made an appointment to visit Dr. Murphy in Washington, D.C. Initially the meeting was going very well, with Dr. Murphy seeming to be very positive toward the possibility of funding the development. Murphy then mentioned that Linvill would have to assign his patent to the Veterans Administration. Linvill refused and the meeting abruptly ended.

As it turned out, this rejection was fortunate. The Office of Education was directed by a colleague of Linvill’s from when he worked at Bell Laboratories. Development of a reading aid for the blind was very relevant to their mission since providing instructional material to blind mainstreamed students was an important problem. Linvill presented the Optacon idea to the Office of Education and it was enthusiastically received. This led to funding at a higher level (over $1.8 million of 1970 dollars over 4 years) than would have been likely from the Veterans Administration.

This higher level of funding was necessary to develop the custom integrated circuits that enabled the Optacon’s small size, which was critical to its success. The Optacon project also assisted Stanford in establishing their Integrated Circuits facilities, leading MIT’s Dean of Engineering to remark that Stanford got the lead in integrated circuit research because of the Optacon.