in Santa Barbara, is six years his junior.

As a boy, Kurzweil had an inventory of parts from various construction toys he had been given and old electronic gadgets he had collected from neighbors. In his youth, he was an avid reader of science fiction. At age eight, nine, and ten, he read the entire Tom Swift Jr. series. At age seven or eight, he built a robotic puppet theater and robotic game. He was involved with computers by age 12 (in 1960),