Jacob Rabinow
Born Jan 8 1910 Sep 11 1999

Optical Character Recognition
Patent Number(s) 2,933,246

Inducted 2005

Jacob Rabinow patented over 200 inventions, including his optical character reading machine. These optical scanners recognized printed letters and numbers, automating work previously done by hand. Business, industry, and the U.S. Postal Service adopted Rabinow's machines. Other inventions ranged from self-focusing cameras and headlight dimmers to a pressurized container to keep tennis balls bouncy.

Invention Impact

Rabinow's advanced techniques allowed machines to examine all kinds of text, regardless of font, and make a series of judgments that determined best matches with standard characters. Over the years he crafted a series of improvements that made the process more reliable, eventually incorporating dictionaries into computer memories so the machines could determine the identity of a smudged or messy character.

Inventor Bio

Rabinow, born in the Ukraine, immigrated to Brooklyn, New York in 1920. After studying electrical engineering at the City University of New York, he began his long career at the National Bureau of Standards where he developed OCR.