Our Milestones

Creation of NCI announced by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

First closed-captioned programs: The ABC Sunday Night Movie (ABC), Disney's Wonderful World (NBC), and Masterpiece Theatre (PBS) air on March 16. First children’s program: 3-2-1 Contact (PBS). First commercial: IBM.

First home videos: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The China Syndrome, and Chapter Two (RCA/Columbia House Home Video). First pay cable series: Bizarre (Showtime).

NCI develops real-time captioning. First live sports event: The Sugar Bowl. First live special: The Academy Awards. First national newscast: World News Tonight (ABC).

First corporately-funded TV series: Family Ties by Kellogg Company.

First daytime serial: Search for Tomorrow. First daytime talk show: The Oprah Winfrey Show.

First game shows: Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.

First Congressional floor proceedings: U.S. House of Representatives.

First home video service in Europe: England.

First inter-continentally-televised event: Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration, U.S. and England.

First real-time Spanish captioning with mixed case and accent marks: Deportes (CNN en Español).

NCI explores Voice Writing as a viable captioning method.

First live broadcast captioned by Voice Writing: C-Span.

First live broadcast captioned by Spanish Voice Writing: KWHY.

NCI captions Sesame Street for the 30th year.

NCI introduces Recapd, a web-based system for displaying live captioning.

NCI was selected to become the sole closed captioning vendor for Hearst Television, one of the most recognized and premier companies in the industry.

NCI played a leading role in both writing and defining the best practices related to FCC closed captioning quality standards.

NCI is proud to support Bloomberg as it expands its global news coverage to Spanish-speaking countries around the world.

NCI develops its automated speech recognition (ASR) service, CaptionSentry.

NCI turns 40!

NCI introduced AI powered machine translation for live captioning in order to localize live news and sporting events.

NCI commemorates the 40th anniversary of the very first airing of closed captions on television.

NCI expands its online and live streaming captioning services to provide accessibility to educational entities, corporations, and events around the globe.