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The Kurzweil Reading Machine, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, has provided unprecedented levels of independence to thousands of blind and visually impaired people throughout the world. As they worked on the invention, Ray Kurzweil and his team were enthusiastically supported by the National Federation of the Blind and its leader, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan, who helped them secure development grants. Completed in 1976, the reading machine is actually a combination of Kurzweil's earlier inventions, the first omnifont optical character recognition (OCR) program and the charge-coupled device (CCD) flat-bed scanner, with his refinement of text-to-speech synthesis. The synergy of these three innovations working together to make an even more powerful tool is in itself a perfect example of the inventor's own law of accelerating returns. A page of printed text is scanned, sent to the OCR program, and then read aloud by the speech synthesizer.

On January 13, 1976, Kurzweil and the National Federation of the Blind jointly announced the invention, and the major news networks covered the story. Walter Cronkite used the machine to deliver his closing words on the CBS Evening News. Soon after that, Kurzweil demonstrated it on the Today show. This attracted the interest of the popular musician Stevie Wonder, who purchased one of the machines for his own use. He loved the device and became Kurzweil's good friend. Their friendship led to further collaborations in music technology.

The Kurzweil Reading Machine, installed in libraries worldwide as well as in homes and offices for personal use, has undergone continued development since its introduction. Over time, the physical footprint of the hardware has gotten smaller. In 2005, the first pocket-size print-to-speech reading machine for the blind was introduced: the Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader (K-NFB). Developed as a joint venture between Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind, the software can be operated on a full-featured cell phone. With this handheld device, which can provide continuous feedback so that the user can orient its camera for the proper angle, someone who is visually impaired is able to read almost any text that he or she might encounter without needing to carry it to a special location for scanning and processing. . .

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