Sarah A. Bell

hear the voice synthesizers

The short clips below accompany the voice synthesizers discussed in Vox ex Machina: A Cultural History of Talking Machines (MIT Press, 2024)

Reproduction of Kempelen speech machine from 1791 — Reproduction at the Deutsches Museum, Munich

Kempelen’s Speech Machine (1791)

Operator sitting at Voder at 1939 World's Fair — Voderette operating a Voder at the 1939 World’s Fair

Voder (1939)

Dr. Frances Ingemann operating PAT in 1958

Parametric artificial Talker (1958)

IBM 7090 at General Dynamics

IBM Computer sings ‘daisy bell’ (1962)

IBM Audio Response Unit as part of System 360

Similar to IBM Voice Answer Back (1964)

Electronic music pioneer Charles Dodge (in middle)

Clip From ‘Speech Song I’ (1973)

Student at Perkins School for the Blind operates KRM

Votrax Speech Synthesizer Used in kurzweil reading machine (1975)

Texas Instruments Speak & Spell learning aid

emulator of original Speak & Spell voice synthesis chip (1978)

Kraftwerk’s Computer World album cover

Clip from ‘computer world’ using ti voice synthesis chip (1981)

Stephen Hawking giving a lecture in 1991

Speech+ Prose-2000 Synthesizer used by stephen hawking (1982)

Software Automatic Mouth floppy disk

Emulator of software automatic mouth (1982)

Comic representations of DECTalk voices

DEC talk Voice Samples (1986)