Since the dawn of the age of computers, researchers have been pushing the limits of available processing power to tackle the formidable challenge of developing software that can understand ordinary human language. At the forefront of this quest for the past fifty years, Martin Kay has been a constant source of new algorithms that have proven fundamental to progress in computational linguistics. "Collected Papers of Martin Kay", the first comprehensive collection of his works to date, opens a window into the growth of an increasingly important field of scientific research and development.