In 1969, John Pierce, a researcher at Bell Labs, stated that "it was not easy to see a practical and economically viable application for speech recognition..." (Reddy 6). He discouraged further investigation of this new advancement because it required artificial intelligence, something that certainly wouldn't make much progress. Fortunately, the field of speech recognition research eventually recovered from this discouraging event and expanded greatly. New developments began to appear rapidly, changing many important aspects of the lives of various groups of people. Speech and voice recognition technology has had a significant impact on society due to its versatility, adding a new level of convenience and accessibility to the modern world. According to the University of Oxford online dictionary, speech recognition is “the ability of a computer to recognize and respond to sounds produced in human speech” (“Voice Recognition” par. 1). This means that a person can speak commands that they will then be performed by the computer. Speech recognition is defined as “the computerized analysis of the human voice, especially for the purpose of interpreting words and sentences or identifying an individual voice” (“Voice Recognition” par. 1). simple; Speech recognition describes the ability of a computer to recognize a person who is speaking and decipher what that person is saying. These terms are often used interchangeably, so it is important to clarify their distinction The use of the term “computer” in these definitions refers to the core mechanisms of various devices, not just common desktop and laptop computers. Once an individual has gained an understanding of these key concepts, a brief history of… middle of paper… and. IDG Consumer and SMEs, November 2, 2011. Web. March 16, 2014. Reddy, DR, comp. Speech Recognition: Invited Papers Presented at the 1947 IEEE Symposium. New York: Academic, 1975. Google Books. Google. Network. March 5, 2014.Schutte, John. "Researchers fine-tune F-35 pilot plane's voice system." The official website of the US Air Force. U.S. Air Force, Oct. 15, 2007. Web. Mar. 17, 2014."Voice Recognition." Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, ndWeb. March 16, 2014."The history of GPS." National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, n.d. Web. March 20, 2014."Voice Recognition." Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, ndWeb. March 16, 2014.Xuedong, Huang, James Baker, and Raj Reddy. "A historical perspective of speech recognition". Communications of the ACM 57.1 (2014): 94-103. Comprehensive text on applied science and technology (H.W. Wilson). Network. March 12. 2014.