David Hammond Shepard (September 30, 1923 – November 24, 2007) was an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

inventor, who invented among other things, the first

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scen ...

device, first voice recognition system and the Farrington B numeric font used on

credit cards A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...

Life

Shepard was born September 30, 1923, in

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

. His father died when he was 2 and his mother when he was 10. His guardian was

Laurens Hammond Laurens Hammond (January 11, 1895 – July 1, 1973), was an American engineer and inventor. His inventions include the Hammond organ, the Hammond clock, and the world's first polyphonic musical synthesizer, the Novachord. Youth Laurens ...

who invented the

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...

. He graduated in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1945 and then

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

with a master's degree in mathematics in 1947. He worked during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

for the Armed Forces Security Agency (now

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

) on

cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic sec ...

, breaking Japanese codes. His nickname was "D-Shep" and "Party Shep" After the war he built an

device (reading machine) in his attic with Harvey Cook Jr. called "Gismo". In 1952 he formed Intelligent Machines Research Corporation to commercialize the invention with William Lawless Jr. in

Arlington, Virginia Arlington County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the District of Columbia, of which it was once a part. The county is ...

. IBM licensed the machine, but never put it into production. Shepard designed the Farrington B numeric font now used on most

credit card A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...

s. Recognition was more reliable on a simple and open font, to avoid the effects of smearing at gasoline station pumps. Reading credit cards was the first major industry use of OCR, although today the information is read magnetically from the back of the cards. In 1962 Shepard founded Cognitronics Corporation. In 1964 his patented "Conversation Machine" was the first to provide telephone

Interactive voice response Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telecommunications, IVR allows customers to interact ...

access to computer stored data using

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the m ...

. The first words recognized were "yes" and "no". Since the 1980s he worked on

high altitude wind power Airborne wind energy (AWE) is the direct use or generation of wind energy by the use of aerodynamic or aerostatic lift devices. AWE technology is able to harvest high altitude winds, in contrast to wind turbines, which use a rotor mounted on a to ...

, harnessing winds at high altitudes to generate power. He founded Sky WindPower Corporation with Australian Bryan William Roberts of the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

. Shepard died in

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

bronchiectasis Bronchiectasis is a disease in which there is permanent enlargement of parts of the bronchi, airways of the lung. Symptoms typically include a chronic cough with sputum, mucus production. Other symptoms include shortness of breath, hemoptysis, co ...

on November 24, 2007, at the age of 84.

Patents

Low output impedance feedback power amplifier

Time interval marking apparatusUS Patent 4572962
Apparatus for extracting energy from winds at high altitudes by David H. Shepard, filed April 28, 1982.
US Patent 4659940
Power generation from high altitude winds by David H. Shepard, filed Oct 11, 1985.
US Patent 7109598
Precisely controlled flying electric generators III by Bryan William Roberts and David Hammond Shepard, filed Oct 18, 2004.
US Patent 7183663
Precisely controlled flying electric generators by Bryan William Roberts and David Hammond Shepard, filed Aug 17, 2004.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shepard, David Hammond 1923 births 2007 deaths 20th-century American engineers Businesspeople from Milwaukee Cornell University alumni University of Michigan alumni Deaths from lung disease 20th-century American inventors 20th-century American businesspeople American military personnel of World War II