Document Scanning Blog

Few people realize the origins of Optimal Character Recognition, or OCR scanning services, used today for processing image files into text-searchable and editable documents. It all sounds quite simple, in our technologically advanced world, but OCR scanning was heralded as a highly futuristic discovery at the time of its debut. At one time, OCR scanning services were even regarded as a form of artificial intelligence. While OCR has been used quite commonly by the US Postal Service since 1965, it wasn’t until 1974 that well-known futurist Raymond Kurzweil started a company that would develop the first “omni-font” OCR service. The earliest systems required the use of a single font, but today they are quite accurate with most fonts. Kurzweil’s earliest application for this product was centered on helping blind people “read” written text by having a computer read it for them out loud. Originally called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, this early OCR scanning device covered an entire tabletop. On the day of its unveiling, Walter Cronkite even used the Kurzweil machine to read his signature “And that’s the way it was” signoff. A commercial version of Kurzweil’s OCR scanning service was released in 1978, enabling companies to upload paper documents onto online databases, and the rest is history. Today’s OCR scanning services are far more sophisticated, enabling the transfer of scanned data to editable text in multiple formats and fonts. Clients using OCR scanning services today can search for desired words within the document and manipulate them, storing their changes in a revised version of the document. OCR services are ideal for legal practices, archive facilities, educational institutions, museums and any other business that uses text-rich documents. Some of the better OCR scanning services allow clients to access their images in many different languages, or even convert them to HTML for easy upload to their web site.