Under that banner, Kurzweil developed up to five generations of the original Kurzweil Reading Machine, priced at about $22,000 in the early 1980s. In 1980, it was purchased by Xerox and renamed Xerox Imaging Systems (XIS). The company that began as Kurzweil Computer Products has changed names and ownership over 21/2 decades. Sales were up 30% in 2002, and enhancements to Kurzweil's two chief products are being delivered at an impressive pace. The products sold today by Kurzweil Educational Systems have come a considerable distance in technological evolution, and the company itself has undergone perhaps as many changes. Today, Kurzweil Educational Systems is selling reading solutions at a fraction of the cost (and size) of that 1976 piece of furniture. Only 25 years after Ray Kurzweil's fantastic breakthrough, the company that bears his name and benefits from his insights as technical consultant and chairman emeritus is going strong.
Accuracy was not stellar, but the machine could actually read! Of course, the machines were so expensive that only libraries and other institutions could purchase them. A blind person could put a printed page on the glass and slowly, very slowly, the machine would interpret and read the page aloud. The size of a washing machine and more expensive than a home in the suburbs, this remarkable invention by Ray Kurzweil sounded like science fiction to many. In libraries and rehabilitation centers in the late 1970s, rumors would sometimes surface about the new and almost unbelievable Kurzweil Reading Machine.
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