We are so blessed to be in our age. High-tech has brought a lot of convenience to our lives. Now if you want to convert pictures into excel or text, you just need to pick up your mobile phone and take a photo. Not long after the computer came out, people were not so good. Let alone taking pictures with mobile phones, even imaging was not easy. At that time, if you wanted to convert pictures into text, you usually used OCR scanners, that is, with OCR A scanner with text recognition function, do you know what the world's first OCR scanner is called?
The first OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanner was a device called "Optical Character Recognition", which was launched by IBM in 1950.
Background introduction:
In the early 1950s, the field of electronic computers was developing rapidly. At that time, people began to realize that converting paper documents to digital form can increase the efficiency and accuracy of data processing, and realize automatic information extraction and analysis. This need led to the development of OCR technology and the advent of the first OCR scanners.
Before being launched, OCR technology has been researched and explored for a period of time. In the late 1930s, IBM researcher Smith Carrie McKee conducted research on printed character recognition and laid the foundation for OCR technology. However, until the 1950s, with the advancement of computer hardware and image processing algorithms, OCR technology was not really realized.
The appearance of the first OCR scanner marked that OCR technology entered the stage of practical application from theoretical research. This scanner scans characters on paper documents by using an optical sensor, converts them into digital form, and performs character recognition and processing by a computer. Although the OCR technology at that time was relatively simple and could only be applied to the recognition of printed characters, it was of great significance. It opened the way for the continuous development and improvement of subsequent OCR technology, and laid the foundation for the digital transformation of paper documents.
The quest for more efficient and automated data processing was behind the introduction of the first OCR scanners. Its birth promoted the research and application of OCR technology, and had a profound impact on the development of subsequent scanners and text recognition technology. Over time, OCR technology has continued to develop, and now it can recognize multiple fonts, handwritten characters and complex documents, providing strong support for information management and processing in the digital age.