1980 – On March 16, NCI breaks through the barriers of silence with the first closed captioned prerecorded television programs, “The Wonderful World of Disney,” The ABC Sunday Night Movie,” and “Masterpiece Theatre.” A decoder box is needed to view the captions. Decoders are sold by Sears for $250.

1982 – NCI provides the first real-time captioning for a live event, the Academy Awards. A court reporter trained as a captioner provides the captions using a Stenotype machine, which uses phonetic codes and allows the captioner to take down the spoken word at speeds of up to 250 words per minute. The ad-libs and the awarding of the Oscars are live captioned by the steno captioner, while a production coordinator displays the prepared captions of the scripted portions of the broadcast. Later that year, “World News Tonight” is the first regularly-scheduled program to be real-time captioned.

1984-1990 –Many more prerecorded and live programs are captioned, including prime time series, movies, home videos, other nightly newscasts, morning news programs, political debates, and a myriad of sporting events, including the Super Bowl and the Olympics.

1989 – NCI partners with ITT to develop the first caption-decoding microchip to be built directly into new television sets in the factory.