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 research into this new advance because it required artificial intelligence, which would certainly not progress very far. Fortunately, the speech recognition research industry eventually recovered from this discouraging event and grew significantly. New developments began to emerge quickly, changing many important aspects of the lives of various groups of people. Speech and speech 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 Oxford University 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 will then be executed by the computer. Voice recognition is defined as “the computer analysis of the human voice, particularly for the purposes of interpreting words and phrases or identifying an individual voice” (“Voice Recognition” par. 1). This definition is very simple; Speech recognition describes a computer's ability to recognize a person who is speaking and decipher what they are saying. These terms are often used interchangeably, so it is important to clarify their distinction. It is also essential to note that the use of the term "computer" in these definitions refers to the basic machines of various devices, not just the familiar desktop and laptop computers. Once an individual understands these key concepts, a brief history of ...... middle of document ......e. IDG Consumer & SME, 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. Internet. March 5, 2014. Schutte, John. "Researchers refine F-35 jet pilot's voice system." The official website of the US Airforce. US Airforce, October 15, 2007. Web. March 17, 2014. “Voice recognition.” Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, nd Web. March 16, 2014. “The History of GPS.” National Park Service. US Department of the Interior, nd Web. March 20, 2014. “Voice recognition.” Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, nd Web. 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. Full Text of Applied Science and Technology (HW Wilson). Internet. March 12. 2014.