Difference between revisions of "Timeline of optical character recognition"

This is a '''timeline of [[optical character recognition]].'''

|Earliest ideas of optical character recognition (OCR) are conceived. [[Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe|Fournier d'Albe's]] [[Optophone]] and Tauschek's Reading Machine are developed as devices to help the blind read.<ref name=":0" />

|First OCR tools are invented and applied in industry, able to interpret [[Morse code]] and read text outloud. The [[Intelligent Machines Research Corporation]] is the first company created to sell such tools.<ref name=":4" />

|The [[Optacon]], the first portable OCR device, is developed. Similar devices are used to digitise [[Reader's Digest]] coupons and postal addresses. Special typefaces are designed to facilitate scanning.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":5" /><ref name=":6" />

|Scanners are used massively to read price tags and passports.<ref name=":7" /> Companies such as Caere Corporation, [[ABBYY]] and Kurzweil Computer Products Inc, are created. The latter one develops the first omni-font OCR software, capable of reading any text document.<ref name=":3" />

|OCR software is made available online for free, through products like [[Adobe Acrobat]], WebOCR, and [[Google Drive]].<ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

|[[Paul Gottlieb Nipkow|Paul Nipkow]] invents the [[Nipkow disk]], an image scanning device that later will be a major breakthrough both for modern television and reading machines.<ref name=":2">"The History of OCR". ''Data processing magazine''. '''12''': 46. 1970.</ref>

|[[Edmund Edward Fournier d'Albe|Edmund Fournier d'Albe]] develops the [[Optophone]], a handheld scanner that when moved across a printed page, produces tones that corresponded to specific letters or characters, so as to be interpreted by a blind person.<ref>EE Fournier, [http://statisfactions.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/opto1920.pdf The Type-Reading Optophone, Our Surplus, Our Ships, and Europe's Need, and more] ( [[Portable Document Format|PDF]] ), inScientific American , vol. 123, nº 19, New York, Scientific American Publishing Co., November 6, 1920, pp. 463-465.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=d'Albe|first=E. E. Fournier|date=1914-07-01|title=On a Type-Reading Optophone|url=http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/90/619/373|journal=Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences|language=en|volume=90|issue=619|pages=373–375|doi=10.1098/rspa.1914.0061|issn=1364-5021}}</ref>

|American engineer [[John B. Flowers]] patents the "One-Eyed Machine Stenographer", a machine capable of reading and typing a script. It worked by superimposing all the letters to find a point that marked each of them.<ref>[http://www.introni.it/pdf/La%20Scienza%20per%20Tutti%201916_11.pdf La macchina che legge e che scrive] ([[Portable Document Format|PDF]]), in La scienza per tutti, Year XXIII, nº 11, Milano, Casa Editrice Sozogno, 1º June 1916, p. 166. (italian)</ref>

|Italian professor Ciro Codelupi envisions the "Reading machine for the blind", capable of transforming luminous sensations into tactile sensations.<ref>[http://www.introni.it/pdf/La%20Scienza%20per%20Tutti%201921_02.pdf Macchina per leggere pei ciechi] ([[Portable Document Format|PDF]]), in La scienza per tutti, Year XXVIII, nº 2, Milano, Casa Editrice Sozogno, 15 January 1921, p. 20 (italian)</ref>

|Austrian engineer [[Gustav Tauschek]] creates the first OCR device called the "Reading Machine", with a photo-sensor pointing light on words when they corresponded to a content template in its memory.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://history-computer.com/ModernComputer/Basis/OCR.html|title=History of Computers and Computing, Birth of the modern computer, The bases of digital computers, OCR|website=history-computer.com|access-date=2016-09-09}}</ref>

|Israeli physicist and inventor [[Emanuel Goldberg]] is granted a patent for his "Statistical machine" ([https://www.google.com/patents/US1838389 US Patent 1838389]), which was later acquired by [[IBM]]. It was described as capable of reading characters and converting them into standard telegraph code.<ref name=":0" />

|MIT professor [[Vannevar Bush|Vannebar Bush]] develops the Microfilm Rapid Selector, a similar but simpler Goldberg' statistical machine, and 40 times faster.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com.pe/books?id=MV-nL7IxmIcC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219#v=onepage&q&f=false|title=Emanuel Goldberg and His Knowledge Machine: Information, Invention, and Political Forces|last=Buckland|first=Michael Keeble|date=2006-01-01|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=9780313313325|language=en}}</ref>

|Engineers working on the [[Radio Corporation of America]] start a project to help the blind and the [[United States Department of Veterans Affairs|U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs]], using the first text-to-speech techniques.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=pCQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA125&dq=popular+science+1949+%22Some+time+ago%22&hl=en&ei=gZjhTI-wHZGUnweD79T6Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=true ''"Reading Machine Speaks Out Loud"''], February 1949, Popular Science.</ref>

|American cryptoanalyst [[David H. Shepard]] and Harvey Cook Jr. build "Gismo", a machine able to read aloud letter by letter and interpret Morse code ([https://www.google.com/patents/US2663758 U.S. Patent 2,663,758]).<ref name=":4">{{Cite web|url=http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=885|title=The First OCR System: "GISMO" (1951) :  HistoryofInformation.com|website=www.historyofinformation.com|access-date=2016-09-17}}</ref>

|The [[Intelligent Machines Research Corporation]] is founded by D. Shepard and [[William Lawless Jr.|William Lawless Jr,]] to commercialise Gismo (later renamed to "Analysing Reader").<ref name="NT">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/us/11shepard.html|title=David H. Shepard, 84, Dies; Optical Reader Inventor|date=December 11, 2007|newspaper=[[New York Times]]|author=Douglas Martin|accessdate=June 5, 2010}}</ref>

|American magazine ''[[Reader's Digest]]'' becomes the first business to install an OCR reader, used to convert typewritten sales reports into [[punched card]]s.<ref name=":0" />

|Stanford professor [[John G. Linvill|John Linvill]] develops the [[Optacon]], the first portable reading device for the blind.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.afb.org/aw/aw040204.asp|title=The Reading Machine That Hasn't Been Built Yet|website=AccessWorld|accessdate=18 September 2016}}</ref>       

|''Reader's Digest'' expands its OCR use to digitise serial numbers of coupons. with a [[RCA 501]] computer.{{cn|date=September 2016}}

|American inventor [[Jacob Rabinow]] develops an OCR machine to sort mail from the US Post Office.<ref name=":6">{{cite web|title=Optical character recognition - History|url=http://www.abbyy.co.il/?categoryId=63424|website=ABBYY Technology|accessdate=18 September 2016}}</ref>

|The [[IBM Rochester|IBM Rochester lab]] develops the [[IBM 1287]], the first scanner capable of reading any handwritten numbers.<ref>{{cite web|title=Rochester chronology|url=https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/rochester/rochester_chronology2.html|website=IBM|accessdate=18 September 2016}}</ref>

|[[American Type Founders]] and Swiss designer [[Adrian Frutiger]] introduced [[OCR-A]] and <nowiki/>[[OCR-B]]; typefaces made to facilitate OCR operations.<ref name=":5">Frutiger, Adrian. ''Type. Sign. Symbol''. ABC Verlag, Zurich, 1980. p. 50</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://typekit.com/fonts/ocr-a-std|title=OCR-A Std {{!}} Typekit|website=typekit.com|access-date=2016-09-18}}</ref>  

|Canadian postal operator [[Canada Post]] starts using OCR systems, to read the name and address on the envelopes and to print barcodes, using [[Invisible ink|ultraviolet ink]] ([https://www.google.com/patents/US5420403 U.S. Patent 5420403]).<ref name=":1">{{cite web|title=Overview of OCR and Its Applications|url=http://files.microscan.com/industrysolutions/ocr_whitepaper.pdf|website=Understanding Optical Character Recognition|accessdate=18 September 2016}}</ref>

|American inventor [[Ray Kurzweil]] creates Kurzweil Computer Products Inc., which develops the first omni-font OCR software, able to recognize text printed in virtually any font.<ref name=":7">J. Scott Hauger, [http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-02272007-092410/unrestricted/LD5655.V856_1995.H384.pdf Reading Machines for the Blind] ( [[Portable Document Format|PDF]] ), Blacksburg, Virginia, Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, April 1995, pp. I-II, 11-13.</ref>

|[[Robert Noyce]] founds the Caere Corporation (now [[Nuance Communications]]), and introduces the first commercial handheld OCR reader.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/caere-corporation-history/|title=History of Caere Corporation – FundingUniverse|website=www.fundinguniverse.com|access-date=2016-09-23}}</ref>

|Kurzweil's company is sold to [[Xerox]], who renamed it as [[Scansoft]] (now merged with Nuance Communications).<ref name=":2" />

|Caere Corporation develops the first passport scanner for the [[US State Department|U.S. State Department]].<ref>{{cite web|last1=Jacobson|first1=Gary|title=No grudges, Bill Moore says, but he still seeks justice|url=http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20110723-no-grudges-bill-moore-says-but-he-still-seeks-justice.ece|website=Dallas News|accessdate=18 September 2016}}</ref>

|American retailers [[Sears]], [[Kmart]] and [[JCPenney|J.C. Penney]] start using OCR to scan price tags.<ref name=":1" />

|OCR Russian company [[ABBYY]] is founded by [[David Yang (entrepreneur)|David Yang]], and starts selling products intended to simplify converting paper files to digital data.<ref name="Mixergy interview">{{cite web|url=http://mixergy.com/david-yang-abbyy-interview/|title=Mixergy interview: How A Bulletin Board Post Changed Everything – with David Yang|accessdate=22 August 2013}}</ref>  

|The first program that recognizes [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]] is invented by Russian company [http://ocrus.ru/ OKRUS].<ref name=":0" />

|OCR technology is made available online as a service (WebOCR), in a [[cloud computing]] environment, as well as in mobile applications like real-time translation of foreign-language signs on a smartphone.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://files.microscan.com/Technology/OCR/ocr_whitepaper.pdf|title=Understanding Optical Character Recognition|website=Bar Code & Data Acquisition|accessdate=18 September 2016}}</ref>

|The [[free software|free]] cross-platform OCR engine [[Tesseract (software)|Tesseract]] is published by [[Hewlett Packard]] and the [[University of Nevada, Las Vegas]].

|[[Adobe Acrobat]] starts including support for OCR on any [[PDF file]].<ref name=":9">{{cite web|url=https://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200805/060208AdobeAcrobat9.html|title=Press Room|date=14 July 2009|publisher=Adobe Systems|accessdate=4 December 2010}}</ref>

|[[Google Ngram Viewer]] is developed to chart frequencies of words on any source printed from 1950 to 2008.<ref name="Huf">"Google Ngram Database Tracks Popularity Of 500 Billion Words"  ''Huffington Post'', 17 December 2010, webpage:  [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/17/google-ngram-database-tra_n_798150.html HP8150].</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://research.googleblog.com/2011/08/culturomics-ngrams-and-new-power-tools.html|title=Culturomics, Ngrams and new power tools for Science|language=en-US|access-date=2016-09-18}}</ref>

|The [[MNIST database]] is created to train machine learning models in pattern recognition.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://yann.lecun.com/exdb/mnist/|title=MNIST handwritten digit database, Yann LeCun, Corinna Cortes and Chris Burges|website=yann.lecun.com|access-date=2016-09-18}}</ref>

|Google offers OCR tools to scan any [[Google Drive]] files in over 200 languages for free.<ref name=":8">{{Cite web|url=https://research.googleblog.com/2015/05/paper-to-digital-in-200-languages.html|title=Paper to Digital in 200+ languages|language=en-US|access-date=2016-09-18}}</ref>

* [[Optical character recognition]]

* [[Handwriting recognition]]

[[Category:Optical character recognition]]

[[Category:Computing timelines]]