Atlas record: https://www.aitimeline.dev/en/events/evt-0186/
Research · February 1975
DRAGON
Baker built a system in which every level of knowledge about language is one probabilistic model, and recognition is a search for the most likely path.
Why it matters
Instead of a chain of heuristic rules there was one model, and that bet displaced every other approach a decade later.
Other participants assembled systems from separate modules, each with its own rules. Baker instead described acoustics, phonetics, lexicon and syntax as a single Markov process and searched it for the best path. Accuracy trailed the competition, but the approach scaled. Baker and his wife Janet founded Dragon Systems in 1982 and carried the line through to a consumer product.
Event record
- Event date
- February 1975
- Timeline date
- Event date
- Verification
- Sources gathered automatically · September 17, 2026
- Lines
- ID
- evt-0186
The February 1975 issue of IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing.
Related events
Earlier
Later
- Builds on HARPY 1976links to this record
The author names DRAGON as one of the two sources of his design.
- Extends Dragon Systems is founded 1982links to this record
The company was founded by DRAGON's authors to carry the same approach to a product.
- Related Dragon NaturallySpeaking 1997links to this record
Twenty-two years from a thesis on a probabilistic model to a product on a shelf.