Computer Vision: What it is and why it matters

Early experiments in computer vision took place in the 1950s, using some of the first neural networks to detect the edges of an object and to sort simple objects into categories like circles and squares. In the 1970s, the first commercial use of computer vision interpreted typed or handwritten text using optical character recognition. This advancement was used to interpret written text for the blind. As the internet matured the 1990s, making large sets of images available online for analysis, facial recognition programs flourished. These growing data sets helped make it possible for machines to identify specific people in photos and videos.