Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc. Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. Kurzweil Educational Systems The Friedberg Lecture Series: Raymond C. Kurzweil

Raymond Kurzweil is founder and chief technology officer of Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc. and chairman and CEO of Kurzweil Technologies, Inc. and Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc. He developed the first omni-font optical-character recognition system, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD flatbed image scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first computer music keyboard capable of accurately reproducing the sounds of the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large-vocabulary speech-recognition system. He is the recipient of the 1994 Dickson Prize (Carnegie-Mellon University's top science prize), the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery and many other honors. In 1990, he was voted Engineer of the Year by the over one million readers of Design News magazine and received their third annual Technology Achievement Award. In 1988 he was named Inventor of the Year by MIT and the Boston Museum of Science. He was honorary chairman for innovation at the White House Conference on Small Business convened by President Reagan. A graduate of MIT, he has received nine honorary doctorates in science, engineering, music, and humane letters from leading colleges and universities. His book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was chosen Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990 by the Association of American Publishers, and his companion documentary film received seven national and international awards, including the CINE Golden Eagle Award and the Gold Medal for Science Education from the International Film and TV Festival of New York.