Raymond Kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil, born on 12 February 1948, is an inventor and pioneer of artificial intelligence who invented the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the first device to transform print into computer-spoken words, enabling blind and visually impaired people to read printed materials. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970, majoring in computer science and literature, and several years later formed a company to explore pattern recognition technology such as optical character recognition. In 1974 he developed the first omnifont OCR, software that understood letter shapes in any font, and he and the team he led also developed the first charge coupled device flatbed scanner. His other contributions include the Kurzweil 250 music synthesizer, which recreates the rich sounds of orchestral instruments. Since 1973 he has founded nine companies, and he received the National Medal of Technology in 1999 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002.