[gui-talk] identifying a speech synthesizer

[Rasmussen, Lloyd]

I was distressed to find that the "history of speech synthesis project" pages of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History have been moved somewhere I haven't found.
But the article entitled "Votrax" on Wikipedia
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Votrax
should answer most of these questions.  The first dozen or so Kurzweil Reading Machines must have used an early Votrax synthesizer board.  When they built 50 or more units, they switched to a CompuTalker synthesizer, I think.  In the mid to late 1970s, a Votrax synthesizer cost a few thousand dollars.  The Type 'n Talk, released in 1980 or 81, was a huge price break, but didn't sound quite as good, either.  The rest is history.


Lloyd Rasmussen, Senior Staff Engineer
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress   202-707-0535
http://www.loc.gov/nls
The preceding opinions are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress, NLS.

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Mike Arrigo via gui-talk
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2014 12:42 PM
To: gui-talk at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] identifying a speech synthesizer

Did the votrax synths use the same speech chip as the artic synths, as 
well as the braille and type 'n' squeaks? There is a bit of similarity I guess.
Original message:
> Sounds like my old Votrax PSS from my old DOS days.

> On 9/3/2014 9:52 AM, Ray Foret Jr via gui-talk wrote:
>> Not the echo I think.


>> Sincerely,
>> the Constantly Barefooted Ray, Still a very happy Mac and iphone user!
>> Sent from my Mac, the only computer with full accessibility for the 
>> blind built-in and fully protected by ClamXav Antivirus!

>> On Sep 3, 2014, at 8:56 AM, Mike Arrigo via gui-talk 
>> <gui-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:

>>> Hey everyone, saw this youtube video of the hro robot from the 1980's. 
>>> I would have loved to have had one of these, I think only 1000 were 
>>> made, and for their time, they did quite a bit. Does anyone know what 
>>> speech chip this is, I'm guessing it was either the echo or the ssi263
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dUL9qgU1M


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