Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (1978) Apple storing its 200-word vocabulary entirely

storing its 200-word vocabulary entirely in solid-state memory

human voice

9 GHz Intel Celeron processor and featured 4 GB of RAM

Originally inspired by Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka’s desire to listen to opera during long-haul flights

was a wildly popular 19th-century gadget that became the Victorian era's version of virtual reality

Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (1978) Apple storing its 200-word vocabulary entirelyTexas Instruments Speak & Spell First Commercially Released Product to Use Synthetic Speech The Texas Instruments Speak & Spell, unveiled in June 1978, was a watershed moment in digital history, marking the first time the human vocal tract was electronically duplicated on a single chip of silicon. Developed by a small team of engineers, the device utilized a revolutionary speech synthesis chip to turn digital data into a recognizable, albeit robotic,