William Schreiber, ECRM Founder, Dies

ECRM noted that William F. Schreiber, ECRM founder and Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, died suddenly at his home on Sept. 21 at the age of 84.

Together with Melvin J. Fennell from The Associated Press and fellow M.I.T. Professors and Ph.D.s Samuel J. Mason and Donald E. Troxel, Schreiber developed one of the first commercially successful optical character recognition (OCR) machines in 1969. And on March 28, 1969 founded ECRM.

Though the funeral was private, a commemoration of Dr. Schreiber’s life will be held at the M.I.T. Faculty Club at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 21.

Dr. Schreiber attended the New York City public schools and Columbia University, where he received a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering. In 1953, he received a Ph.D. in applied physics at Harvard University, where he was a Gordon McKay and Charles Coffin fellow. Dr. Schreiber worked at Sylvania from 1947 to 1949 and at Technicolor Corp., Hollywood, Calif., from 1953 to 1959. From 1959 until his retirement in 1990, he was a faculty member at M.I.T. as professor of electrical engineering.

In his lifetime, he received the Honors Award from the Technical Association for the Graphic Arts (TAGA), the David Sarnoff Gold Medal from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Gold Medal of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE), and is a four-time recipient of the Journal Award of SMPTE. He was a devoted member of TAGA, an active member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as SPIE, and a fellow of IEEE and SMPTE.

Throughout the period when he was an active member of the M.I.T. faculty, Dr. Schreiber maintained a consulting practice in his fields of expertise, and served as an expert witness in several patent legislation cases.

He leaves behind a wife, two sons, a daughter, and the thousands of students he helped mold.