TIMELINESAn exciting interface foray into early digital music: the Kurzweil 250

This is Richard Pew's second Timelines contribution. He describes twists and turns in designing a groundbreaking digital synthesizer---inspired by Stevie Wonder and built by Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is the inventor also known for pioneering work in optical character recognition (OCR), speech technologies, and predictions that we are bearing down on a technological singularity. Pew was program chair for the first official CHI Conference in 1983 and participated on three panels at CHI'86. He has been president of the Human Factors Society and was the first chair of the National Research Council Committee on Human Factors.---Jonathan Grudin