“Experiments in the Recognition of Hand-Printed Text, Part I: Character Recognition”, 1968-12-09 (; backlinks):
[part 2] Among the many subject areas in the field of pattern recognition, the recognition of machine-printed and hand-printed alphanumeric characters has perhaps been the classic example to which people have referred in exemplifying the field.
Interest in character recognition has long run high; an extensive literature in hand-printed character recognition alone dates back to at least 1955.