Talk:OCR Systems

OCR Systems

I am Gregory Boleslavsky mentioned in the article about OCR Systems. It contains a number of inacuracies about myself, Ted and Vadim. Before I correct I want to understand who c0ntributed to it in the first place so I can discuss my prosed changes. Nomoreocrforme (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Mr. Boleslavsky, I am the primary contributor to this article. Feel free to list any inaccuracies you see, I'm all ears. DigitalIceAge (talk) 01:05, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

OK, good. Here is what actually went down. I wrote this in about 3 mins replying to a wiki mentor, but I do remember lots of interesting details:: Hi Nomoreocrforme! It looks like you already found and posted at Talk:OCR Systems. Make sure to read our policy on conflicts of interest, as editing in areas where you have a personal connection is a bit of a minefield. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:37, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I figured something like that. The problem is that some of the things attributed to the 2 other people mentioned I did entirely alone and earlier by years or months, chronology of other products is plain wrong, my title is wrong, oroginal personnel is wrong, etc. However if I describe things with absolute accuracy, my contribution will for sure appear greater than it is there. Basically the owner was retiring, sick, in a hospital with 5k and just me working for him. I got an offer from IBM, didn't want to work for a large co, saw an ad for microtek scanner, went to LA, convinced them to give me a guy to develop a driver for PC with, told Ted I will write a demo for the show in Chicago, did that, then sold Canon on the idea. They gave me and Ted 100k, I hired Vadim, and then became general manager and ceo and hired 50 more people, sold to a bunch of companies and managed everything til 1990. The I left and the co was sold to Adobe with my team moving there. That's it. But it is not at all what is in the article. Nomoreocrforme (talk) 03:20, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gotcha. You should post this all at Talk:OCR Systems. It would help if you could find some reliable sources that corroborate that info. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

timing -- 1985 February was when Ted decided to quit. I saw microtek scanner introduction in March, went to LA end of March, by end of April had a driver for PC and by July had a working demo that Ted and I went to NCC with in chicago in June or July 1985. Went from 0 sales in 1985 to 5 million in 1990. Nomoreocrforme (talk) 03:25, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Vadim and Ted's daughter might work. I hired my brother in 1987, he remembers. Nobody else knows Nomoreocrforme (talk) 03:26, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

and my ex-wife Nomoreocrforme (talk) 03:27, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I just found my resume entry for that period. It used to be listed as my first job but because of age discrimination I stopped doing that few years ago:OCR SYSTEMS, INC, HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA

VICE PRESIDENT, GENERAL MANAGER AND CHIEF TECHNOLOGY

OFFICER

 During my tenure as the general manager of OCR Systems yearly sales grew from 0 to $4.5 Million, while the

staff grew from two to forty employees.

 The company held the largest share of the software OCR market for IBM PC from 1986 through 1991.

 Participated in choosing the development tools, converted all development from Assembler to C, and maintained

professional software development practices adhering to contemporary system life cycle methodologies,

emphasizing design, configuration management, quality management, daily builds and daily regression testing.

 Product had 500,000 lines of portable C code.

 The consumer product line ran on DOS, MAC and Windows platforms, the OEM version was available for DOS,

Windows, OS/2, MAC, VMS and Unix, NeXT and Sun, and was used by various companies, including DEC,

CANON and Texas Instruments.

EDUCATION:

 Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Computer Science Cum Laude, University of Pennsylvani Nomoreocrforme (talk) 03:47, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

as far as what happened before. I was indeed working as a wire wrapper for the early 70s TTL boards attached to a 4 bit varian ted programmed. Then Hank, the digital designer quit and we managed to get Pitney Bowes to bid with us on the Post Office automated sorting project. For that, I redesigned the whole thing, used a 8086 CPU multibus box, rewrote the hand printed number recognition Ted wrote for the Belgian Post Office, designed a horizontally microprogrammed pipelined custom processor with dual ported ram, where pitney bowes huge scanner sent number images (external facing port) and read via multibus. That was my senior project which I finished in 1984. Then Pitney Bowes lost the contract, Ted got sick, was in a hospital, told me to close shop since he only had 5k left. BTW, Ted's daughter went to Penn and was my girlfriend then, that is how I met Ted. Nomoreocrforme (talk) 04:01, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information, Mr. Boleslavsky. I will try to work this information wherever possible. It's more likely I will have to trim some excess detail in cases where I can't reconcile the truth from other newspaper sources (unfortunately we can't cite firsthand information from talk pages and the like). In any event, large portions of this article, including mentions of your role and that of Brikman's, were paraphrased from this story in The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 5, 1989, reprinted here for your perusal: page 0, page 1, page 2. DigitalIceAge (talk) 05:02, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh right, I remember the guy. He did visit us in that final location in Huntingdon Valley. Yes, I do remember that and I do remember what he wrote and you are exactly right, what you wrote is what he wrote. There was also a girl journalist pretty late in the game, maybe 89, in a popular PC publication I don't quite remember, that interviewed me, but I only talked about ReadRight. I honestly never cared about fame or money or my reputation. So look, I wrote what I remember, but the only self-marketing I ever cared about was related to making sure my employees could get their salaries. Adobe made sure of that when I could not so that was that. I saw myself in Wikipedia to my surprise a short while ago and this is my attempt to correct the info. It is entirely self serving so do whatever Wikipedia rules allow. I am happy to answer any questions. Nomoreocrforme (talk) 05:44, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

No problem, I think it's awesome to hear from people who worked for the companies I write about, even if to point out flaws. If you're curious, I discovered the company after finding a loose copy of ReadRight buried in a box at a flea market. I seriously did not count OCR as something that was possible entirely in DOS/x86 code in the 1980s; major props for making it possible.

I will have to dig up that magazine article. I bet it's buried in the Internet Archive somewhere. DigitalIceAge (talk) 06:32, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

The trick to being able to run on a 386 with 256k RAM was writing in 8086 Assembler. After that I converted to C since machines got more powerful. In fact, the tech in '84 where I had a board start writing various metrics to RAM that are used in features for recognition within 6 clock cycles after 32 by 32 bit image was loaded by the scanner, at the cost of 120 MSI/LSI chips and 2000 wires, was obsoleted by 386 that did that faster in software. Our logo and all printed material was designed by Maria Edelbaum, who was a Graphic Design BFA from University of the Arts in Philly. She is my ex-wife and the 5 years of work at that intensity turned her into a psychiatric nurse practitioner. Nomoreocrforme (talk) 06:47, 9 February 2023 (UTC)