My undergrad university was involved in developing hand-writing recognition for the postal service when I was there in the late 80s / early 90s (https://cedar.b

My undergrad university was involved in developing hand-writing recognition for the postal service when I was there in the late 80s / early 90s (https://cedar.buffalo.edu/hwai/hwai_home.html https://cedar.buffalo.edu/hwai/hwai_home.html). They brought in a ton of grant money, and even hired undergrads to help with the research. My roommate worked for them when we were seniors, and I was envious of the fact he had access to his own sparcstation. This was in a time where the undergrad labs just had VT-220 terminals connected to a shared and overloaded sparc server.