The text appears to be a transcript of a podcast or video episode discussing the history and development of speech synthesis technology. It covers the evolution of computerized voices in movies and television from the 1960s to the 1980s, the methods used to create these voices, and the limitations of early speech synthesizers.
The speaker explains that the computerized voices in movies and TV shows during this period were not genuine speech synthesizers, but rather a combination of actors reading lines in reverse and the pitch of their voices being altered. This was done using audio editing software like Audacity.
The speaker also discusses early devices like talking dolls from the 1980s, which were not computerized synthesizers but used a type of internal phonograph. The speaker dissects one of these devices, showing how it amplifies vibrations from a stylus that moves across a vinyl record, producing different sounds.
The speaker then talks about early computer games that incorporated speech, explaining that these games were using digitized recordings of speech, not actual speech synthesis.
The podcast or video then moves on to discuss more advanced speech synthesizers. The speaker demonstrates the use of a speech cartridge for the Commodore 64 computer, which can speak words by typing them into the computer. The speaker also shows a speech synthesizer program called Sam for the Commodore 64, Atari, and Apple 2 computers.
The speaker concludes by discussing some practical uses of speech synthesis, such as making prank phone calls and automated telephone services. The podcast or video ends with a mention of Siri, Apple's voice recognition software, and a reference to the Votrax speech synthesizer from the 1930s.
Here are some key facts extracted from the text:
1. Many computerized voices in movies and TV shows from the 1960s to 1980s were not real, but created by actors or devices that played pre-recorded sounds.
2. The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research experiment achieved a nuclear fusion reaction at 100 million°C for 30 seconds in 2022, which was seven times hotter than the core of the Sun.
3. The Speak and Spell was one of the first consumer devices that could speak, but it only had about 200 pre-recorded words.
4. The Currah Speech 64 and the Speech Sound Program Pack were examples of speech synthesizer cartridges that could create words out of allophones, the fundamental building blocks of speech.
5. Sam was a software-only speech program that could say anything typed in, but it required every cycle of the CPU to produce the sound.
6. Speech synthesis has found many uses over the years, such as being the voice of Stephen Hawking and Siri.