ECTACO Inc. (East-Coast Trading American Company Incorporated) is a US-based developer and manufacturer of hardware and software products for

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

and electronic translation. They also make

jetBook ECTACO jetBook is a series of e-book, electronic-book reader devices developed by Ectaco. The original device was announced in the United States in October 2008. ECTACO jetBook Specifications * Size: 153 mm × 109 mm × 10&nb ...

eBook readers.

Speech recognition technologies

ECTACO is one of the first developers of speech recognition technologies in the field of electronic translation. The speech recognition technologies developed by ECTACO in cooperation with the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

are used by such international organizations as

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

, the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

and the

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is a regional security-oriented intergovernmental organization comprising member states in Europe, North America, and Asia. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, the p ...

(OSCE), such state institutions of the US as the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

United States Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the Interior minister, interior, Home Secretary ...

Social Security Administration The United States Social Security Administration (SSA) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government that administers Social Security (United ...

United States Secret Service The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security tasked with conducting criminal investigations and providing protection to American political leaders, thei ...

, Department of Health Services,

United States Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...

, New York Hospitals etc. The cooperation with US institutions was especially active in 2004–2006. ECTACO devices were also used in the

War in Iraq This is a list of wars involving the Republic of Iraq and its predecessor states. , style="background:#F88" , Coalition of Gulf War, Coalition victory * Kuwait, State of Kuwait resumes self-governance over all Kuwaiti sovereign territory * Esta ...

. The speech recognition system developed by ECTACO allowed troops as well as other US governmental institutions to communicate with non-English-speaking communities, especially in conflict regions. The technology made it possible to translate not only the outgoing message but the incoming one as well, with no dependence of the quality of the translation on the speech particularities of an individual speaker – a service not provided by other companies in the segment of the time.Report
Technologies used by US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan

Founding

ECTACO was founded in the autumn of 1989 in New York, USA, by David Lubinitsky, who was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

, Russia. The company was functioning at that time mainly as a reseller of electronic dictionaries from other manufacturers. In 1990 ECTACO started to develop its hardware and software. Russian- and Polish-speaking immigrants in the USA became the primary commercial target group for the products of the company. The first electronic dictionaries of ECTACO supported translation between Russian ↔ English, Polish ↔ English and later German ↔ English language pairs.

Developing centers

In 1998 a software developing center of ECTACO was opened in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The center developed software for app. 300 models with support of 47 languages and started to develop speech recognition software in 2000. The first commercial device of ECTACO with speech recognition appeared on the market in 2002. With cooperation with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency the company launched production of the first multi-lingual translation device with ASR (Advanced Speech Recognition). The hardware developing center of ECTACO is located in Hong-Kong.

World presence

The headquarters of ECTACO are located in Long Island City, New York. In 1993 ECTACO opened a local representation in Russia (Saint Petersburg and Moscow). Within the next 2 years offices were opened in Germany (Berlin),

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

(London), the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

(Prague),

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

(Toronto),

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

(Warsaw) and

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

(Kiev). In 2000 a second US office was opened in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

Brands

Ectaco has several

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

s which it uses to break its products into categories. *iTravl - is aimed at travelers and features multiple languages and speech recognition. *Lingvosoft - encompasses all the translation software available from Ectaco and is available for multiple platforms including

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

, and

Pocket PC A Pocket PC (P/PC, PPC) is a class of personal digital assistant (PDA) that runs the Windows Mobile operating system, which is based on Windows Embedded Compact, Windows CE/Windows Embedded Compact, and that has some of the abilities of modern ...

. *Partner - this brand houses a general purpose translation dictionary which targets business users and language learners. *SpeechGuard - is the brand used to market devices to

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

, police and other government agencies. *

JetBook ECTACO jetBook is a series of e-book, electronic-book reader devices developed by Ectaco. The original device was announced in the United States in October 2008. ECTACO jetBook Specifications * Size: 153 mm × 109 mm × 10&nb ...

- a range of eBook readers.

References

External links

ECTACO Inc. – Global Headquarters

JetBooks on the ECTACO Website

JetBook Website

Forbes.com
Russia Takes Advantage of Brain Power at Home
International Herald Tribune
Palm Reading Goes Educational
Wired.com

Pcworld.com

CNN

Patent Storm * ttp://www.ectaco.com/awards/ ECTACO clients
SpeechGuard Handheld Language Translation
{Dead link, date=August 2019 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes Law & Order Magazine
Air Force Dual-Use Science & Technology Two-Way Voice-to-Voice Translator
Air Force Research Laboratory (PDF-Datei; 524 kB) Computer companies established in 1989 Companies based in New York (state) Computer companies of the United States Software companies of the United States Software companies established in 1989 Computer hardware companies