Intelligent Machines Research Corporation (IMR) was founded by David H. Shepard and William Lawless, Jr. in 1952 to commercialize the work Shepard had done with the help of Harvey Cook in building "Gismo", a machine later called the "Analyzing Reader".
IBM obtained a license on IMR's patents in 1953 and in 1955 contracted with IMR to build a developmental system which was able to read constrained hand printed numeric characters if reasonably well formed. However, IBM did not market this system. In 1959 IBM did market a system of its own, classifying it as an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system, and the term OCR from then on has been standard in the industry for this technology.
IMR went on to deliver the world's first several commercially used systems, including one used by Readers Digest in its book subscription department. Readers Digest donated this system many years later to the Smithsonian, where it was once put on display. The second system was sold to the Standard Oil Company of California, as arranged by the Farrington Manufacturing Company, a leading company in the credit card business at that time, with many systems to read oil company credit cards to follow, one of which was also on display at the Smithsonian later on.
In 1959 Farrington acquired IMR, and the numeric font designed by Shepard, called Farrington 7B, has been standard for most of the well known credit cards since that time. Shepard later left Farrington and founded Cognitronics Corporation in 1962.
Both Shepard and Lawless had been NSA employees at one time. Lawless later held key positions in IBM.
Famous quotes containing the words intelligent, machines, research and/or corporation:
“Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)
“In Hell all the messages you ever left on answering machines will be played back to you.”
—Judy Horacek (b. 1961)
“One of the most important findings to come out of our research is that being where you want to be is good for you. We found a very strong correlation between preferring the role you are in and well-being. The homemaker who is at home because she likes that “job,” because it meets her own desires and needs, tends to feel good about her life. The woman at work who wants to be there also rates high in well-being.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our party]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I’ll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)