The Voder - Homer Dudley (Bell Labs) 1939
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- Опубліковано 8 лип 2011
- The Voder by Homer Dudley (Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey) was the first device that could generate continuous human speech electronically. The flowing composition of the many speech sounds had to be done manually in realtime on a special keyboard shown in this video.
In 1939, Alden P. Armagnac wrote in "Popular Science" about this speaking device: "He hasn't any mouth, lungs, or larynx-but he talks a blue streak. His name is Pedro the Voder, and you may see him in action at the New York and San Francisco world's fairs. His creation from vacuum tubes and electrical circuits, by Bell Telephone Laboratories engineers, crowns centuries of effort to duplicate the human voice.
To manufacture Pedro's conversation, his operator employs a keyboard like that of an old-fashioned parlor organ. Thirteen black and white keys, fingered one or more at a time, produce all the vowels and consonants of speech. Another key regulates the loudness of the synthetic voice, which comes from a loudspeaker. A foot pedal varies the inflection meanwhile, so that the same sentence may state a fact or ask a question. About a year's practice enables an operator to make Pedro talk glibly."
And the "Time" wrote on January 16th, 1939: "The Bell Telephone demonstrators took pains to make it clear that Voder does not reproduce speech, like a telephone receiver or loudspeaker. It originates speech at the touch of an operator, synthesizing sounds to form words. The men who built it were able to do so because in their telephone researches they had made a close study of how speech sounds are made by the human larynx, mouth, breath, tongue, teeth and lips. With electrical filters, attenuators, frequency changers, etc. they found that they could produce 23 basic sounds; that intelligible speech could be synthesized from various combinations of these sounds, controlled by a skilled operator manipulating a keyboard and foot pedal.
The machine's possible sound combinations are so various that Voder can imitate the inflections, overtones and shading of human diction. By altering pitch it can change from a man's voice to a woman's or a child's. It can mimic animal sounds, locomotive whistles, the noise of an airplane engine. Since the fluent production of speech on a keyboard is not so simple as pounding a typewriter, Bell Telephone picked 24 of the cleverest telephone operators from 300 candidates, gave them about twelve months' intensive training as Voder operators. Like concert pianists, they have to keep in trim by practicing several hours a day. The most difficult speech component they must coax out of Voder, and the one that sounds least natural, is the letter l. When someone at last week's demonstration asked for the words 'Bell Telephone', they came out something like 'Behrw Tehwephone'."
The Voder was to some extent a by-product of the Vocoder, as S. Millman stated it: "In conceiving the vocoder, Dudley recognized the carrier nature of speech. He observed that the speech signal is formed by modulating (with the slowly changing vocal resonances) the spectral shape of the sound produced by vocal sources. The vocal sound sources may be periodic, as produced by vocal cord vibration, or aperiodic, as produced by turbulent airflow at a constriction.
The modulations in shape of the speech spectrum could, therefore, be measured in terms of the relative energy in contiguous filter bands, and the periodic (voiced) or aperiodic (unvoiced) sources could be characterized by a 'pitch' detector (a frequency meter). The signal could be reconstituted (synthesized) from these data by allowing to amplitude modulate the respective outputs of an identical filter bank which was excited by either a periodic pulse source or a noise source."
M. D. Fagen, S. Millman, Amos E. Joel, G. E. Schindler, A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: Communications sciences (1925-1980), Vol. 5, Bell Telephone Laboratories, inc, p. 101 f.
I can't imagine experiencing this shit in 39', must've freaked people out.
39 feet? Hell yes it would freak me out too!
The voice kinda freaks me out a bit
Shid it freaks me out *now*
Well ibm 7094 was very popular in 1961-1969 (i think). the grandpa of vocaloids. the vocoder was the grandma of vocaloids. they are very much like the voder. i know this didnt make sense at all or relate to the voder lol
@@basketballjones6782 1939, before the Baby Boom of the 1940s
This has to be the most niche talent ever. Being able to play the Voder.
Yeah...your band has an upcoming gig but your usual voder player can't make it, so you get on the phone, call around to find a fill-in voder player to take her place. :) lol
that woman operating the voder had some awesome skill!
I feel like there should be a retro futurist horror/sci-fi film in which the antagonist is a self-aware machine that has a voice like this.
Darth Voder?
Gath Gealaich
Vocaloid :)
There is probably a HUGE amount of exactly those types of movies already made.
Kim Stennabb Caesar You're probably right.
System of a Clown That's "2001: A Space Odyssey" exactly
Siri, say hello to your grandfather.
Great Grandfather, the IBM 704 is the grandfather
And the mac is the dad
Just how superhuman was the woman operating this thing?
She said "took me a year of constant practice" (!)
@@KingN0thingPt Wow!
About as much as a talented and trained musician.
That "Auld Lang Syne" bit was pretty astonishing for 1940
Just imagine if someone combined this with a player piano's trackbar allowing these routines to be played back... that would be a creepy recording to play back...
In a sense, that's how early electronic speech enabled toys, cars, clocks etc. from the 1970s to the 1990's worked internally, although there were no mechanisms used to do that :)
It would be possible to use player piano tech to record the performance of the voder operator. It would be difficult, but possible.
Speech enabled products were outfitted with a speech synthesizer chip that used a set of parameters to play back a recorded performance, often derived from a recording of a voice actor. You could thonk of those parameters as a set of hands moving along the different parts of a musical instrument, or the individual knobs of a (literal) synthesizer.
Alternatives to a speech synthesizer chip would be to use a record, or magnetic tape, or sampling the speech onto a ROM (which would have seemed to be an absurd waste of memory in mass-produced goods at the time)
It is fascinating to hear speech synthesis from the 1930s!!
+CassetteMaster Pretty sure it was recorded in the 50's.
1939.
@* AnimalHeadSpirit * It's cool. :)
This is amazing coming from such a long time ago!
2:44 is just so cuuute! VODER is adorable!
Thanks for the upload - this is still a fantastic machine, nearly 100 years later. The women who commanded the voder were absolutely amazing.
It really sounds like the electronic voice from Kraftwerk's early albums like the Man Machine
YOU NO CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER
That's because the technology Kraftwerk use was invented by the guy who made this machine.
In fact, the VODER was developed as a stepping stone and demonstrator for the technology that became the Vocoder they Kraftwerk used. The VODER is essentially half a vocoder, with the human being the other half.
@@VaughnRhinehart That's right. In a vocoder, speech is analyzed and used to electronically set filters, which a synthetic tone then passes through, resulting in a robot-like voice. In the Voder, you have the same filters, but they are operated by keys instead of being set automatically from a voice input.
Didn't Earth Wind & fire also use one on one of their songs?
Best speech synth ever. Creepy cool.
5:58 Anyone else recognize this sample from Lemon Demon’s “Geocities”?
Jonathan Orth I was about to comment about that!
I learned about this thing *because of* Geocities. Listening to the source without the song feels strange, like something is missing.
thats how i learned about its existence
that's why I am here lmao
@@plushthefox same, i wouldn’t have heard about this if it wasn’t for that lol
Better than most contestants on 'The Voice'
Sounds like the voice editor on Tomodachi Life.
Wow... the history of voice synthesis is just as amazing as the future to come.
The great great grandpa of your pfp lol
HAA-HAA-HAA
Mind-boggling. It gets almost creepy when it starts to sing. Wow. What a task it must have been to operate it.
i would die for him,,,
If i had the ability to turn objects into people. The voder would be the first one..
While the Voder was revolutionary, it wasn't the first artificial speech replicator. That title, to my knowledge, would go to Euphonia, created by Joseph Faber in 1844. It was a disembodied human face attached to a keyboard, which controlled it's lips and tongue, with a bellows acting as its lungs. It was an interesting way to replicate the human speech system, but it creeped the public out, and was destroyed by Faber in a fit of rage. As creepy as it was, at the same time, a part of me wishes it was still around by the time the Talking Heads came along. It would be truly a spectacle to behold, seeing Euphonia perform Psycho Killer with the Heads. Hell, I'd even settle for Voder doing it.
Just looked up a picture, its terribly creepy looking
@@AshKetchum442 I know, right?
Wow, I didn't know that! Thanks for the clarification, kind stranger.
@@akatsukiboi1202 No problem. Have a good day, bud.
Damn this was 1939?! It sounds good! This must have been amazing back then...
It's amazing how much this exchange comes off as something from a Philip K Dick novel.
I guess the topic is appropriate.
I really like this voice for some reason.
Somehow it feels more human that modern synthesizers to me.
"Ya tvoy sluga, ya tvoy rabotnik."
+Robert Cornhole Bweeee, bweeee, bweee!
+PikaSka On yer bike for the Tour De France.. =D
+Robert Cornhole We are the robots...
Wir sind die Roboter (bong, bong-bong-bong), indeed.
thanks
I wish that commercial versions of the Voder were available. This would be a really cool prop to own, and I'd imagine that with modern components it could be made for a relatively low price.
Someone apparently made A replica of it and it cost under $200 to make
Yeah, being able to use transistors would be a big win!
vocaloid was invented in 1939
Now THIS is what I learned how to play keyboard for.
If I were to impersonate somebody using one of these machines, would it be... Voder fraud?
LOL
That sounds quite evil, in fact one might call you Darth Voder.
@@llary The Force was strong in that pun.
Trump certainly would think it was
PUNZ
way ahead of its time
So I ended up here from a Lemon Demon song and... Understanding how it works makes it no less absolutely horrifying. I am still SO scared.
Got here the same way
@@schezofan6320 Ayy, cool
4:24 Very 1939
wooow hahaha
Still true :)
Ouch.....
Someone needs to make this thing into a VST!!!
Nathan VanMiddlesworth Media agreed.
Nathan VanMiddlesworth Media a company called Waveboy once made a disk for the Ensoniq EPS 16+ called The Voder, which featured similar functionality. I had it but I wasn't as dedicated as the girl doing these examples back in 1939; she practiced for about a year. :)
well, it's one now - plogue chipspeech.
AlterEgo (which is free) will accomplish this, but much more easily than the original Voder. Any Vocoder VST can also get a similar effect.
love it, i'd like to hear one singing modern music
I cut Homer Dudley's lawn for about 3 years...he was a character!
1:54 the voder sounded a bit scarcastic when it laughed. Lol!
“Okay! Ha-hahaa!”
This is amazing!
Waveboy really did a stellar job mimicking this......
Yes! The Waveboy Voder for Ensoniq ASR10 was great fun! Was it for the EPSs too or only ASR? I have to fire my ol' stream sampler up and see if the floppy drive works haha! :D
That's amazing this was made in 1930s. First electronic programmable computers weren't created until 1940s.
Great Scott, Kraftwerk with a DeLorean! The very first in speech synthesis, definitely interesting.
Thank you Plogue!!!
thanks!
99 percent invisible sent me here
+Kevin Shiflet Me too. An excellent podcast normally, and I found this a particular interesting episode.
+Kevin Shiflet
Me too.
+Kevin Shiflet Yeah. Same here. Nice episode indded...
Ha Ha, same!
yep, This one really caught my interest. I was wondering if anyone was going to say that! The reason I'm a year late is because I only found the podcast a few months ago and I download the episodes and listen to them at work.
5:58
Anyone here from lemon demon?
No one?
Okay.
i am
I am!! haha
Better than anything today!!!! I want one for christmas!
“Can he say parlez-vous français?”
“parlez-vous français”
“Splendidly Done”
“Merci beaucoup :>”
Wow Bell Labs who invented the vocoder ^^ i think it's realy simple post synthetiser, they only used an oscillator for the intonation, and a pink noise generator for the " TTTT " " KSSS" and " SHHHH" as a carrier, maybe they built a formant filter, hum interresting i should try to replicate this with thor and the vocoder built in inside Reason. the woman operator have very great skill ^^ !!!
Wish I could find the Voder somewhere. Would love to be able to record it.
WFMU sent me here. This is amazing.
Am I the only one wondering why this isn't more prominently known? I'd think this machine at this time would've made world headlines to the point that it'd be a household name
lots of things were going on that were forgotten. since this was never brought to market and so niche that it was quickly forgotten like many other things at the world fairs
I think this was actually more of a proof-of-concept. That is, a voder is a vocoder without the encoder. The technology was being developed for telecommunications.
imagine if someone travelled back in a time machine and played a clip of siri or alexa. These people wouldn't ask what was speaking, they would ask *who* was speaking
I want one!
And then, Daft Punk made it big.
Not quite right. They use vocoder with the modulator being human voice through microphone and carrier signal being played with any synth note or chord. More or less.
This has no human vocal input so a bit different.
I get your point though, and i would argue that Herbie Hancock made vocoder popular :D
I come from Bell labs and my time machine's calibration seems to off by two years, replying to this comment.
You are technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
Kraftwerk*
Pity there aren't many around these days; Dearth Voder(s)
Best "talking piano" :D
Cooooooool
That's pretty good for 1939
Its 2019 and they film it in black and white.
LOL the animal noises
I fucking love this. I WANT ONE
Same
Interesting !
"Can you say, 'She saw me'?"
*"SHEEEEEEEE SAAAAAAAAW MEEEEEE"*
Ok, Ha-ha-ha
*_The first Vocaloid?_*
O.o
no.
✬ Miyuki Append ✬ no
The first electronic voice synthesiser. The Vocaloid software was released very recently.
+✬ Miyuki Append ✬ what happend with you miyuki. I dont see you on google+
+✬ Miyuki Append ✬ No. Vocaloid is a voice synth that was released in 2004. Just because something is a voice synth doesnt mean it's automatically a Vocaloid.
I find it interesting that he says that there are no practical applications for the Voder. The reason is that it was made before there was computer technology to automate the speech. I think there is one example of a mainframe computer producing speech, but practical talking devices started showing up in the late 70s, such as a Speak & Spell, a chess computer, and arcade games like Berzerk and Gorf.
Everybody's gangster until the voder talks by itself at 12AM
The Soma Terra just released, one of its algorithms is exactly this voder. Its insane to see it recreated.
This is very cool! Do any emulators of this machine exist?
Luke, I am your Voder !
1:48 is my fav-
awesome! (Y)
The voder is out of tune? It's a continuous pitch instrument (I guess, based on the fact you play it with a pedal). So like a correctly tuned violin, the player still has to intonate it while playing. Continuous pitch instrument. So the player is out of tune, not the voder...
is there anyway I can get a hands-on experience with that thing?
Apparently there are three of them in existence and all are replicas
Imagine this but with a pipe organ XD
this might give me nightmares
There's a video to go with this. Do you have it? For the life of me I cant find it again
1:17 MICKEY IS THAT YOU?!
Same
The Voder - Quantum Project
No actual video footage of this device exists? I DNT wanna see a slide show
I wonder if someone made a vst version of this?
The /original/ Vocaloid!
In a way. The Voder paved the way for Vocaloid and other singing and speech synthesizer software. Without it there would indeed be no Miku or any of the voicebanks.
😂 It's so creepy.
@@keepyourshoesathedoor it’s the best you could do in the 30s
Why does the narrator guy sound like Mister Fischoeder?
Haha yes!!! maybe the machine its real? Mister Reese you are here? :V
this thing has always freaked me out
"Yes."
Vocaloid WHOMST
The is really cool, do they still make these?
No lol. It apparently takes months to learn how to make words with it. It is over 80 years since it's creation.
at least it didn't say EXTERMINATE!
Those voices were actually produced by a device called a ring modulator, which is a different and simpler effect. Voices using vocoders are common in music and Sci Fi, though (such as Styx's Mr. Roboto, ELO's Mr. Blue Sky or Kraftwerks Man-Machine).
*he*
it sounds so cute
i agree
Does anyone know who is speaking in the video - was that Dudley. Or is this from a radio programme or something?
by your command.
The 28 girls who became expert operators probably all took piano lessons growing up.
This is really cool, but what, if any, practical applications did it have?
Oh, nevermind. He just said in the end that it was really just for study lol
If it wasn’t for just a study, I imagine it could’ve been for people that were mute.
Not so much in the way of practical applications in this form, but the principles evolved into the playback part of vocal tract-simulating audio compression (and speech synthesis) in the following decades, and is still with us today as a fundamental element of modern schemes.
That's creepy as hell
"the voder, home duder"
5:59 hi lemon demon fans
Are you there Mister Reese?
Greetings people of the past ^^
has anybody electric schematic of this device?
Recorded in 1939 or developed in 1939? Also how come this stuff was never shown back then?
+Skyrilla watch the video. It was shown at the 1939 and 1940 worlds fair. He also talks in the end about why it isn't seeing wide spread distribution.
+Brittany Bellows Would love to see actual video footage.
The first Vocaloid