DECtalk Flexidisc Demo 1984
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- Опубліковано 13 сер 2018
- The high fidelity recording of the quite low-fi DECtalk Evatone demo flexidisc from 1984 seen in Viewer Mail 6. The origins of the very familiar voice we all know are not evident in the demo, but we do get a glimpse into how DEC intended the system to be used. In retrospect synthesized speech automated voicemail seems creepy... hey - how did Stephen Hawking get my number and why is he crank calling me? Enjoy!
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I was an engineer at DEC High performance systems about 1983. We used to host leading architects of the day from other firms to come and speak about their work, their impressions of DEC products etc. This was hosted and moderated by Gordon Bell the VP of engineering for DEC. At one point a lead guy from CDC came to talk. As he went on he referred to DEC Talk as sounding like a "Drunken Swede" but otherwise a remarkable product. The DEC Talk inventor put up his hand and in a heavy Swedish accent said, "I beg your pardon but I was not drunk". Turns out some of DEC Talks oddities did derive from it's inventors first language.
Thanks for sharing this very interesting story, and I always wondered why DEC sounded like it did, if it was just technology limits, but now I know that's not fully the case. :-)
That's an incredible anecdote, and one the main reasons I love Fran's channel.
Well, Wikipedia says Dennis Klatt was born in Wisconsin, but...at the same time, he was born in *Wisconsin*. So that kinda makes sense.
The long vowels masked the imperfections in the consonants, too. TSI's TTS had even longer vowels. 1982
I really wish they would make deck talk for Android. I love that synthesizer and always have. The only thing I don't like about it, is instead of saying like I got stung by a bee, it would say I got strung by a bee. I'm like how the heck do you get strung by a bee? lol, but I really wish they would make it for Android because I love that synthesizer and would love to use it on my phone.
I encountered DEC Talk around 1986 for the first time - it was being used as a screen reader for a blind student. He made good use of it, I recall. Former DEC Head here in the late 1980's.
Yep probably with JAWS for DOS or ASAP. Man I'd love to be able to use that stuff on a real machine instead of in an emulator.
Jaws and a Doubletalk LT going into a terminal, either DOS or Speakup on Linux. Those were the days. Actually, I don't miss that very much. Software synths are more convenient but aren't as "fun" or nostalgic etc to use.
I still have a Dectalk USB synth, don't use it though because it is just as big as my fanless pc and the drivers keep breaking with NVDA, because devs need to just make all the breaking changes in one swoop vs this 3 year constant refinement thing.,
As soon as I heard it the first thing that came to mind was "Hello, my name is Stephen Hawking."
I used to work for DEC from 1978-82, then 1983-1985. first as a Sr Field Services Engineer in NYC, then as an Electronic Engineer with Field Service Logistics in Woburn. MA.
Nice :) I just finished installing VAX/VMS on an emulator running under Linux. I had to crack the licensing system to bypass DEC's draconian licensing requirements, which meant learning VAX assembly language. It's running like a charm now. Of course, I can run a number of 8600's on a basic PC... time to read up on clustering. I just had to share that =)
I used a DECTalk to text-to speech announce building and lab airflow alarms in a DOE facility about twenty years ago. This brings back memories. Thanks Fran! :)
This reminds me of SAM on the Commodore 64, all the fun we had when we found ]RECITER mode hehe.
The speech patterns are incredibly similar.
@@flatfingertuning727 I mean, it's entirely possible a lot of SAM was inspired by the academic papers published by Dennis Klatt, but don't quote me on that. :P
Perfect Paul, Huge Harry, Doctor Dennis, Whispering Wendy, Beautiful Betty, Kit the Kid.
I believe it was originally Dennis Klatt's "klatttalk" and turned into the Dectalk hardware and software systems, used by Stephen Hawking for many years and there was a software version towards the end of the products life cycle, in fact I still have a copy of the "original voices" software somewhere. If you are in to electronics, you can get a hardware implementation now as Emic2 for about $60.
Stephen Hawking never used DecTalk. Yes, the voice he used was very similar but it wasn't DecTalk.
unfortunately, the automated thing caught on. Hard to get an actual human on the phone anymore. :\
Sometimes that can be a good thing, when the automated system is more understandable, and helpful then an actual human in a call center that says, this is not my department, let me transfer you over to someone else, and they keep passing you around for 2 hours lol!
@@CommodoreFan64 and, when the automated system connects instantly, but the human operators take tens of minutes! Furthermore, if they're not trained well, they may be less able to answer your question than a computer connected to TTS.
Ahhh......the beginning of " Hello, would you like to take a quick survey". I remember getting those Flexidisc records in cereal when I was a kid.
That record is groovy. I can dance to it.
I just wonder what happened to all of the old DECtalk units from the NOAA that were used for weather radio stations. Some lucky bastid got a few pallets of those for cheap.
One of the original developers recently released a bunch of DECtalk source code, and I managed to compile a Windows DLL version of the NWS DECtalk.
I remember this from a Boston area Radio station WBCN, They played with a DEC TALK all the time on the morning drive show.
Mostly trying to make it say dirty things like a bunch of high school kids.......The things they got away with were amazing.....
I had a copy of that record. I wonder what I did with it? Probably in a box somewhere. "Talk is cheap"? Yeah well, in 1984 US$4000 was a lot of money.
At my very first IT job for a research center in the early 1980s, I connected a DECtalk to an IBM PC and wrote spelling, math, reading comprehension software that engaged mildly mentally handicapped and learning disabled students so we'll, they went from D to B and C to A level proficiency. The voices had names like Perfect Paul, Beautiful Betty and so on. It was a truly groundbreaking device engineered with the help of the brilliant Ray Kurzweil.
My DECTalk DTC01 still works as of a couple weeks ago. Really neat record!
How could know this existed. My dad worked for Digital Equipment at the head offices in Maynard, MA. I have a huge collection of random old computer parts from when my dad built computers. I asked him and he told me he worked on this device but never heard of this record.
I was just at defcon in LV, now at IHCON in Tahoe. Thank you for showing us the preview of our eventual demise.
We will always succumb to different voices.
and thanks for the shirt(s) !!
XO
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Reminds me of the former Boston Computer Museum. They had a DECTalk information line; used to ring it all the time, just to hear those voices. And in the museum, they had a DEC Rainbow DT demo. One day, as a prank, I set to the slowest speed & typed out a many commas as it would hold. Set it off ("commmm-muhhhh....commmm-muhhhh..."); must've taken well over 30 minutes to finish! :D
This is history right here. I am a Dectalk fanboy and didn't know this existed
Oh, I remember the flexible records, they were often included with magazines and advertisements.
Shall we play a game?
How about a nice game of Chess?
Commodorefan64 Tic tac toe, 0 players.
Ian M it's on Hulu if I remember correctly.
Ha, War Games was on TV last night in South Australia.
More like Back to the Future!
This reminds me of the Nova Robotics robots of the movie SHORT CIRCUIT, whenever they spoke - of course, no. 5 not included.
Yes!! I think they used variations of DECTalk voices in SHORT CIRCUIT as well as Back to the Future 2.
I had got my first home computer when I was 18 in about 1997 I had aDectalk Express external synthesizer it was considered the Cadillacs out of the external synthesizers at the time used it with Jaws two.0 this definitely brings back memories I never knew until this video was posted that they had originally had this recorded on vinyl cool.
We’ve come a long way with speech synthesis systems. Some of them sound almost human now.
we have come a long way but quite frankly we're not there yet. The voice is today are not expressive enough. take Google TTS for example, it doesn't acknowledge? it doesn't acknowledge! I think that there's a lot to be desired here. That's just my opinion, maybe I am being too strict but I prefer my screen readers / synthesizers to be expressive. The voices are just not there yet.
I still remember this DEC - stuff, but it was or is pretty creepy to listen. Anyway cheers for uploading it. cu Toni
A blast from the past!
I like the voice. Quite soothing.
Back to the Future!
Your jacket is now drryyy.
... Joshua is that you??
It's very intelligible for its time. Neat stuff.
Well, now I know where most of the original speech dictation voices in MacOS came from. And at 4 grand from DEC, what a bargain in 1984. Same year "The Terminator" came out.
Wow this reminds "not exactly of course" of back in the early 2's when I had to call msn about my account
Mr Jones had a pretty healthy balance in 1984 - I wonder how he's doing now?
Who remebers the record like that with some kind of sweepstakes for the Gost Busters movie release recording on it. I don't fully remember all of it other than we didn't win. As the record let us know
Great Video. Didn't know these existed. I need to find one of these for my DEC collection.
Haha, just saw you down in the comments. I was thinking the same thing. Not much luck on eBay though.
lol I checked eBay too. Must be quite rare
I have a copy in a box somewhere at home. But not selling even if I do find it.
Indeed. Much human. Very natural. Such words.
Yeah neural networks have done wonders for speech engines.
And now I do this with a speakjet the size of a PIC 16F84 chip.
The Speakjet isn't as good as the Dec Talker. Actually, I like the sound of the Dec Talker much more than I like the sound of any free speech libraries I know of. I wonder if adequate technical documentation for the Dec Talker exists to allow an accurate emulation thereof?
As good as... no... but MUCH smaller. I was talking dedicated electronics... if running on a PC... there are some (for pay) voice services that are pretty good. cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/
Uuuuuu. John Madden! Football!
Scanner listening to 49mhz telephones, and DTMF decoders ruined a good thing.
wasnt this also the voice the speak n spell used?
speak n spell was different -- it used compressed recordings of a real person speaking, rather than synthesizing vocal sounds from a numerical model
WOW......
RS-232. Man, oh man! :-)
Wish my back balance had a total of 1-5-9-5-0 $
Bank *
Well you could've afforded that DECtalk then, if it really was offered for measly 4000$ for you to utilize. 😁
In 1984 money, no less! That'd be like $39445 in 2018 money!
What were the flexible records in National Geographics?
I ALMOST won an auction on eBay once for a serial DECtalk terminal!
Somebody sniped me at the last few seconds!!!
You need to invest in Bidnapper. Can do it online I think.
Music Non Stop
Techno Pop
Is it just me, or does putting the demo of this (at the time) high tech new text to speech system on a flexible vinyl record seem a bit strange and antiquated even back in 1984? Sort of like offering software demos in 2018 on floppy disks. I used to find these flexible records in old National Geographic magazines from the 60s and early 70s.... had no idea this tech was still being used into the 80s, you would think compact audio cassettes would have replaced records for this sort of thing.
Well.. these flexible records were generally included in a magazine or softcover manual - an inflexible cassette isn't as well suited for that situation.
👌!
john madden
Gee.... 4000 on 1984 it's $9,734. today. They have a different sense of what "talk is cheap"
Sir Stephen Hawking's voice
Phonebot nostalgia!
Where's the other 200K?
Ed McLaughlin daymn that tecknowkedgery aint cheap
« Dr. Freeman to Anomalous Materials test laboratory immediately »
I miss my PDP11/45!
Okay, this messed with me. The previous video I watched had no audio (on accident, not intentional,) and then the next new video in my list was this one. I thought maybe something was wrong with UA-cam itself! (Removing audio from new uploads.)
It's only a matter of time.
Did you get a new turntable? Your PL-518 is gone??
It needs a new cartridge so it's taking a nap for the time being.
Stephen Hawking's voice.
$4000 eh?... wonder how many clients they got
INPUT !
DECtalk, now a standard with weird UA-cam channels and lazy narrators. I just love these flexidics. I have several from numerous catalogs and magazines including the MAD magazine.
I'm a weird UA-cam channel and I feel attacked
Why'd you redact part of the number?
TheComputerGeek010101001 3 decades plus later the number probably no longer goes to DEC and it wouldn't be a good idea if some business gets mass called by nerds who found the number on a youtube video.
Legend813a The only one worse (greater impact) was, and still is 867-5309. They had to exclude that number in every area code in North America. Dammit Jenny...
Mike Cowen my home phone number actually starts with 867 here in NJ. Had that number for over 25 years.
Here's a tip. You're at Walgreens or other similar place that has a "savings" card system linked to a phone number and you don't have their card, say you do and give 867-5309 as your phone number. Odds are, someone in your area code entered it when they signed up. Boom, you get the discounts!
I Review Crap! Genius!
Things that are ridiculously unsafe and puts all other unsafe banking related things to shame: touch tone password entry
Who want's to talk to a DEC?
Naaaatural sounnnding vo-ice
30 years on, it's still easier listening to this Stephen Hawking guy and his little sister, than some babbling call center person in Bangalore.
Seriously, IS that the voice of Stephen Hawking? I heard he used an 80s answering machine but...
it is :)
@@MattSiegel Not quite, Hawking used a different device that used similar synthesis technology.
aeiou
Ooh.. DECTalk.. Not 'DeadDog'.. I think it needs to work on it's enunciation..
2:28 Fame at last ;)
RS232! That's not secure. I bet it was a jazzed-up Telnet protocol. Oh those were the daze. My first bank used this technology. I wonder how many times it was breached. Thanks Fran.
click------- guy Feel very Well informed now. guyad not heard this s ound in a long time. Thank You. ------------ beepclick
p.s. 🤣😁😀
aeiou