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Stevie Wonder was our first customer for the Kurzweil Reading Machine (the first print-to-speech reading machine) in 1976. We became friends and had many conversations about technology as applied to both disabilities and music. In 1982, while giving me a tour of his new “Wonderland” music studio, Stevie asked if it would be possible to build a bridge between the powerful control methods of computer music (in which a broad variety of input devices could be used to control any available sound) with the beautiful sounds of acoustic instruments such as the piano and guitar. I thought about it, and concluded that it would be feasible. Kurzweil Music Systems was born in 1982 with Stevie Wonder as musical advisor.

We showed a prototype of the Kurzweil 250 at the June 1983 NAMM show and people were amazed that both the look and feel of a grand piano was realistically captured in an electronic instrument for the first time. We started shipping the product in 1984 and it quickly became recognized as the first computerized instrument to faithfully capture the grand piano, which we confirmed in A-B tests with pianists.

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