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Comment by lallysingh | Hacker News Reader

What's this got to do with his speech problems? Did you want him to ready it to you?

I think the point was that he entered the information in digitally, so it should have been easier to provide a digital copy rather than scan actual printed pages.

Note: Didn't go to the link, so just guessing.

>he entered the information in digitally

This is Stephen's Hawking's PhD thesis. It is dated 1966. How could he have entered it digitally? UNIX research didn't even start until 1970s.

I believe this comment chain thinks the thesis was written recently. So you guys thought Stephen Hawking didn't have a PhD till now?

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expensive_Typewriter came out in 1961. Cool name also (because computer time was expensive back then!).

That looks interesting!

I quoted UNIX to show how primitive technology was at the time, rather than say he could've possibly used a computer. With ALS, using a computer would as hard as writing I would presume.

His thesis is from 1966, an era in which (1) it is likely that he typed it on a typewriter, and (2) he was still almost completely able-bodied.

Not only did he type it with a typewriter, all the math notation in the thesis is hand-written! There was no math typesetting available in 1966 outside major printing houses. (Or, I guess, any reasonable priced option for getting your PhD thesis properly typeset and printed at all, math or not.)

It's possible Hawking was able to type/write his thesis. It was published in 1965, two years after his ALS diagnosis. Wikipedia says he didn't begin to use crutches until the late 1960s.

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