Editing Ray Kurzweil (section)

===Midlife===

While in high school, Kurzweil had corresponded with [[Marvin Minsky]] and was invited to visit him at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]], which he did. Kurzweil also visited [[Frank Rosenblatt]], a psychologist at [[Cornell University|Cornell]].<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite magazine | last=Michaels | first=Morgan | date=November 6, 2000 | title=Nerd of the Week: Ray Kurzweil | website=Nerdworld: Your source for nerdly culture, life, and work styles since 1995 | url=http://www.nerdworld.com/lf_notw_014.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010122032400/http://www.nerdworld.com/lf_notw_014.html | archive-date=2001-01-22}} Also archived by [https://www.pressandappearances.com/the-nerd-of-the-week-interview the Kurzweil Library + collections]</ref> He attended MIT to study with Minsky, obtaining a B.Sc. degree in computer science and literature in 1970. Kurzweil took all the computer programming courses (eight or nine) MIT offered in his first year and a half.

In 1968, during his second year at MIT, Kurzweil started a company that used a computer program to match high school students with colleges. The program, called the Select College Consulting Program, was designed by him and compared thousands of different criteria about each college with questionnaire answers each student applicant submitted. Around that time he sold the company to [[Harcourt (publisher)#Harcourt, Brace & World (1960) and successors|Harcourt, Brace & World]] for $100,000 {{USDCY|100000|1968}} plus royalties.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kurzweiltech.com/raybio.html |title=Biography of Ray Kurzweil |publisher=Kurzweiltech.com |date=January 13, 1976 |access-date=2011-03-27}}</ref> In 1974, he founded Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc., and led development of the first omni-font [[optical character recognition]] system, a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. Before that time, scanners had been able to read text in only a few fonts. He decided that the technology's best application would be to create a reading machine, which would allow blind people to understand text by having a computer read it to them aloud. But the device required the invention of two enabling technologies—the [[Charge-coupled device|CCD]] [[flatbed scanner]] and the [[Speech synthesis|text-to-speech]] synthesizer. Development of these technologies was completed at other institutions like [[Bell Labs]], and on January 13, 1976, the finished product was unveiled during a news conference headed by Kurzweil and the leaders of the [[National Federation of the Blind]]. Called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the device was large and covered an entire tabletop. [[Stevie Wonder]] heard about the demonstration of this new machine on ''[[Today (U.S. TV program)|The Today Show]]'', and later became the user of the first production Kurzweil Reading Machine, beginning a long-term association with Kurzweil.<ref name="TheSynth">{{Cite book|title=The Synthesizer|last=Vail|first=Mark|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2014|isbn=978-0195394894|pages=76–78}}</ref>

Kurzweil's next major business venture began in 1978, when Kurzweil Computer Products began selling a commercial version of the optical character recognition computer program. [[LexisNexis]] was one of the first customers, and bought the program to upload paper legal and news documents to its nascent online databases. He sold Kurzweil Computer Products to Xerox, where it was first known as Xerox Imaging Systems and later as [[Scansoft]]; he was a consultant for Xerox until 1995. In 1999, [[Visioneer|Visioneer, Inc.]] acquired Scansoft from Xerox to form a new public company with Scansoft as the new company-wide name. Scansoft merged with [[Nuance Communications]] in 2005.

Kurzweil's next business venture was in electronic music technology. After a 1982 meeting with [[Stevie Wonder]], in which Wonder lamented the divide in capabilities and qualities between electronic synthesizers and traditional musical instruments, Kurzweil was inspired to create a new generation of synthesizers that could duplicate the sounds of real instruments. [[Kurzweil Music Systems]] was founded in the same year, and in 1984, the [[Kurzweil K250]] was unveiled.<ref name=TheSynth/> The machine could imitate a number of instruments, and according to Kurzweil's press packet, musicians could not tell the difference between the Kurzweil K250 on piano mode and a grand piano,<ref>{{cite journal |author=Byrd |first1=Donald |last2=Yavelow |first2=Christopher |name-list-style=and |year=1986 |title=The Kurzweil 250 Digital Synthesizer |journal=Computer Music Journal |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=64–86 |doi=10.2307/3680298 |jstor=3680298}}</ref> though reviewers who actually attempted it questioned that.<ref>{{cite journal |title=
Kurzweil Digital Keyboard |journal=One Two Testing |volume=September |year=1984 |quote=". . . the piano sound wouldn't win any blindfold tests against a real grand if they were pitted against one another in the same room" |url=https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/kurzweil-digital-keyboard/8493}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Kurzweil 250 |journal=Electronics & Music Maker |volume=December |year=1984 |quote="During the comparisons, this prompted me to start burying myself in sheet music to see how the 250 could cope with the tonal ebb and flow of Rachmaninoff and the atmospheric haze of Debussy. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Bosendorfer won on both counts . . . " |url=https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/kurzweil-250/8026}}</ref> The machine's recording and mixing abilities coupled with its ability to imitate different instruments made it possible for a single user to compose and play an entire orchestral piece.

South Korean musical instrument manufacturer [[Young Chang]] bought Kurzweil Music Systems in 1990. As with [[Xerox]], Kurzweil remained as a consultant for several years. [[Hyundai Development Company|Hyundai]] acquired Young Chang in 2006, and in 2007 appointed Kurzweil as Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html%3Fid%3D6360 |title=Hyundai names Kurzweil Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems |publisher=Kurzweilai.net |date=February 1, 2007 |access-date=2012-04-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090513021858/http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html%3Fid%3D6360 |archive-date=2009-05-13 }}</ref> Concurrent with Kurzweil Music Systems, he created the company Kurzweil Applied Intelligence (KAI) to develop computer [[speech recognition]] systems for commercial use. The first product, which debuted in 1987, was an early speech recognition program. KAI was sold to [[Lernout & Hauspie]] in 1997.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/16/business/lernout-hauspie-to-buy-kurzweil-applied-intelligence.html "LERNOUT & HAUSPIE TO BUY KURZWEIL APPLIED INTELLIGENCE – The New York Times"]</ref>