Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

268 Kurzweil, RayFurther ReadingFrenkel, Karen A. “Donald E. Knuth: Scholar with a Passion forthe Particular.” Profiles in Computing, Communications of theACM, vol. 30, no. 10, October 1987.———. The Art of Computer Programming. 3rd ed. vols. 1–3. Reading,Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1998.Knuth, Donald E. Literate Programming. Stanford, Calif.: Centerfor the Study of Language and Information, 1992.———. Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About. Stanford,Calif.: CSLI Publications, 2001.Slater, Robert. Portraits in Silicon. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1987.Kurzweil, Ray(1948– )AmericanInventor, FuturistRay Kurzweil began his career as an inspired inventor whobrought words to the blind and new kinds of sounds tomusicians. Drawing upon his experience with the rapidProlific inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil believes thattechnology will soon take an exponential leap called “thesingularity.” (Melanie Stetson Freeman / The Christian ScienceMonitor / Getty Images)progress of technology, Kurzweil then wrote a series ofbooks that predicted a coming breakthrough into a worldshared by advanced intelligent machines and enhancedhuman beings.Kurzweil was born on February 12, 1948, in Queens,New York, to an extremely talented family. Kurzweil’sfather, Fredric, was a concert pianist and conductor. Kurzweil’smother, Hanna, was an artist, and one of his uncleswas an inventor. By the time he was 12, Kurzweil wasbuilding and programming his own computer. He wrote astatistical program that was so good that IBM distributedit as well as a music-composing program. The latter earnedhim first prize in the 1964 International Science Fair anda meeting with President Lyndon B. Johnson in the WhiteHouse. Kurzweil even appeared on the television show I’veGot a Secret.In 1967 Kurzweil enrolled in the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology, majoring in computer science and literature.By the time he received his B.S. in 1970, Kurzweil had metsome of the most influential thinkers in artificial intelligenceresearch, including Marvin Minsky, whom he lookedto as a mentor (see Minsky, Marvin). Kurzweil had becomefascinated with the use of AI to aid and expand humanpotential. In particular, he focused on pattern recognition,or the ability to classify or recognize patterns such as theletters of the alphabet on a page of text.Early character-recognition technology had been limitedbecause it could only match very precise shapes, making itimpractical for reading most printed material. Kurzweil,however, used his knowledge of expert systems and otherAI principles to develop a program that could use generalrules and relationships to “learn” to recognize just aboutany kind of text (see ocr). This program, called Omnifont,would be combined with the flatbed scanner (which Kurzweilinvented in 1975) to create a system that could scantext and convert the images into the corresponding charactercodes, suitable for use with programs such as wordprocessors.A chance conversation with a blind fellow passenger ona plane convinced Kurzweil that he could build a machinethat could scan text and read it out loud. Kurzweil wouldcombine his scanning technology with a speech synthesizer(see speech recognition and synthesis). Kurzweil had tocreate an expert system with hundreds of rules for properlyvoicing the words in the text.In 1976 Kurzweil was able to announce the KurzweilReading Machine (KRM). Soon after the machine’s debut,Kurzweil struck up a friendship with the legendary blindpop musician Stevie Wonder. They shared an interest inmusical instruments and music synthesis. Existing analogsynthesizers were very versatile, but their output sounded“thin” and artificial compared to the rich overtones in thesound of a piano or guitar. Kurzweil was able to create amuch more realistic synthesizer sound using digital ratherthan analog technology.The first Kurzweil synthesizer, the K250, was released in1983. His machine was the result of considerable researchin digitally capturing and representing the qualities of notesfrom particular instruments, including the “attack,” or ini-