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.

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With technology constantly changing, and new applications being invented every day, the choice of a document scanning company can be somewhat perplexing. Some companies just offer imaging services and OCR scanning, and they stop there. Others add the flexibility of online document storage and full-service document management. And recently, many new companies have started specializing in the scanning of medical records.

So what do you look for in a document scanning company? Well, that will depend on the needs of your business, but here are my top five things to consider:

1. Security needs to be first and foremost, especially if your document scanning company will be able to view sensitive legal or medical documents.

2. Reliability is important too, especially when your business is dependent on the document scanning service to provide online access to their files.

3. OCR scanning is something that should be used whenever possible, particularly for legal practices, museums, and archive specialists who need to access and edit text from scanned documents at a later date.

4. Believe it or not, document storage is becoming the number one reason many businesses begin using a document scanning company. Once they start to realize how easy it is to access scanned documents online, they usually want to have all their documents accessible from any computer. This is why so many document scanning services began offering online document storage as one of their selling points.

5. Archiving is another consideration. Many document scanning companies will not only pick up your documents and drop them off after scanning, they will also offer a secure, temperature controlled storage area so you will not need to store the physical records at your facility. This is an attractive option for many paperwork-heavy businesses, and is a great reason to choose a document scanning service that is within an easy driving distance from your office.

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