120 Years of Electronic Music
Kurzweil Music Systems Inc
Kurzweil Music Systems Inc. was founded by inventor Raymond Kurzweil, who had developed a revolutionary reading machine for the blind that scans written materials and reads them aloud in a synthesized voice. The Musician Stevie Wonder, a customer for the reading machine, challenged Raymond Kurzweil to create an electronic instrument that blended the richness of acoustic sound with the control and sound modification of electronics. The Kurzweil engineers then developed the first ROM-based sampling keyboard, the K250, to successfully reproduce the full complexity of acoustic instrument sounds in 1983.
Kurzweill PC 88 Synthesiser
In 1990 Kurzweill Systems was bought out by the Korean musical instrument manufacturer Young Chang and set up its R&D institute in Waltham, MA, USA. Raymond Kurzweil left the company which has continued to the present to produce sophisticated digital synthesisers and samplers.
The Kurzweil K250 sampler module
Sources:
© 120 Years Of Electronic Music 2005
