Speak and Spell
Texas Instruments released a toy that talked: the vocal tract was reproduced on a single chip for the first time.
Why it matters
Synthesised speech reached the nursery at the price of a toy, long before a machine learned to listen.
The TMC0280 synthesiser, working with a memory chip and a controller, stored linear prediction coefficients rather than recordings, and generated sound through a filter that modelled the vocal tract. That let the vocabulary fit in a memory tiny even by 1978 standards: about 165 words in 128 kilobits. The toy was shown in June 1978 and was to go on sale in July at $50. It sold in millions and was most people’s first experience of talking with a machine. Recognition reached the consumer only twelve years later.