An optical-character-recognition machine for the blind that's capable of reading most types of printed text aloud, the CCD flatbed scanner, speech-recognition software, the first synthesizer that created sounds virtually indistinguishable from those produced by their acoustic counterparts, and a whole bunch of other nifty things we can barely comprehend came from Ray's brain.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

As you'll recall, this service was first unveiled at SXSW, which delivers the latest headlines and accompanying imagery upon a wearer's request -- even to the point of reading an article aloud, if you so desire.

ENGADGET

He highlights the usual PowerPoint sins: text-heavy slides, bullets, reading the text on the slides aloud, etc.

FORBES: Conquering Death by PowerPoint

"WarGames" director John Badham also worried that people would eventually tire of watching Matthew Broderick reading aloud from a screen, so he pushed Mr. Parkes and his co-screenwriter Lawrence Lasker to devise a way to make the computer talk, like HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey, " even though no such technology existed at the time.

WSJ: "Disconnect": From Talkies to Texties

The next day Wright and her business partner, JillSinger, took turns reading aloud from Made in America, Sam Walton's autobiography, during the five-hour drive to Bentonville, Ark.

FORBES: Schmaltz Appeal

After a few undistinguished months of Reading Aloud on the Six O'Clock News, he became a presenter in the mid-80s, working first on the regional news programme London Plus (known within the building as "Sod Off Kent") and then on the BBC's Breakfast Time.

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