Once upon a time in 1989, before app-whisperers like iPhone’s Siri and Windows’ Cortona fit conveniently in our jean pocket, people built rather large and strange-looking speech synthesis machines, like this one. The Talking Machine, a 230cm rack of pipes that looks like something out of Dr. Seuss, was built by Martin Riches, who controlled it via home computer and posited it as art. Here are a few technical details from Riches’ blog to help you process what you’re seeing and hearing: “The machine is arranged like an organ; a pipe for each speech sound. Each pipe consists of a noise-maker—a reed or whistle” and also has a filter piece that shapes the acoustic blast into speech. I would say it’s impressive how far we’ve come, but I’d much rather have this gizmo than my generic white phone.
This Seussian speech synthesis machine was the ’80s alternative to Siri
Once upon a time in 1989, before app-whisperers like iPhone’s Siri and Windows’ Cortona fit conveniently in our jean pocket, people built rather large and strange-looking speech synthesis machines, like this one. The Talking Machine, a 230cm rack of pipes that looks like something out of Dr. Seuss,
