Really old TTS

From SpeechTech:

Volume 2: Synthesize it Loud, Synthesize it Proud

This installment of our ongoing series in the history of speech is sure to bring nostalgic remembrances to all you Speech Heads born in the late 70s to early 80s. Just a little more than thirty years ago, Texas Instruments brought us an important development would change many a childhood. No. I’m not talking about the TI-89 calculator with your copy of “Drugwars” surreptitiously installed so you could slack off in the back of pre-calculus. I’m talking about the Speak & Spell.

Speak & Spell

I can see some speech-eyes rolling. “Really, Eric?” you’re asking, but hear me out. Despite it’s humble size, The Speak & Spell played an important role in Speech History. It was one of the first highly accurate and widely available text-to-speech products—really one of the first practical applications of speech synthesis for a consumer market.

The toy was a direct outgrowth of Texas Instrument’s bizarre 1970s experiments in speech synthesis. The world had just seen man create the tech required to reproduce human speech with tuned voices stored on ROMs. Seeing the potential of those speech fruits, Paul Breedlove, a TI engineer, began development of the Speak & Spell in 1976 with a paltry $25,000 budget. Yes, even then it seems that the world callously and stupidly turned a cold shoulder to speech. Breedlove, however, would be vindicated. Within two short years, the Speak & Spell was flying off the 1978 shelves.

Breedlove’s completed proof incorporated TI’s trademarked Solid State Speech technology, which stored full words in solid state the way calculators of those halcyon 1970s days stored numbers. The Speak & Spell even had a slot for “expansion module” cartridges, which could be inserted to beef up the onboard vocabulary. O’ the foresight of those Texas men! You can see the very same principles at work at today’s speech solutions, like with Nuance and their specific expansion vocabularies for radiology, or orthopedics, or (hopefully in the future) trucking—Nuance, if you’re reading this, I know that there’s at least one boy who’d like to see a CB trucker vocabulary for his Dragon Naturally Speaking rig next Christmas. ...

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Hypnosis through TTS

Portable Virtual Hypnotist 5.6.700

An application that can simulate a hypnosis session

Virtual Hypnotist an interactive, open source hypnosis software.

Virtual Hypnotist includes features such as voice recognition, speech synthesis, subliminal messages, completely customizable scripts (featuring a unique scripting language), videos, audio, and lots more.

Virtual Hypnotist has the sole purpose to simulate a real hypnosis session.
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Interesting Experiment

From
Herald

Dozens of Dixon Middle School students wearing white masks bumped into each other in the hall, fumbling to adjust to their morning routine through pinhole eye slots.

"Dude, this is, like, weird," one boy remarked to another as he clung to the straps of his backpack for direction. "I can barely see."

"There was a door coming to hit you," cried a girl guiding her disoriented and frustrated friend through the crowded hallway. "I was trying to be nice."

One small boy appeared to take the lesson to heart, even as others threatened to mow him down in the frenzy.

"Luckily, I have some vision," he declared.

It was part of an object lesson hosted Friday morning by Foundation Fighting Blindness, a Maryland-based nonprofit that works to raise awareness of and sensitivity for degenerative eye diseases. The organization was visiting Dixon as part of an educational campaign called Students for Sight. Earlier in the morning, two successful blind men spoke in an assembly about the realities of living in a sightless world.

"The greatest fear a blind person has, as far as mobility is concerned, is trying to cross the street," said Lynn Boulter, a Salt Lake City resident who traveled with his guide dog, Mariah. "The real problem with blindness is getting around. It isn't some of the other things."

Boulter explained that his dog has been trained for "intelligent disobedience" -- that if he walks into oncoming traffic, for example, the dog will stop leading him. He said he's been committed to using guide dogs ever since a previous one, Park, kept him from walking into a crowded street. Now he relies on his dog as he would his own senses, he said.

"Besides being beautiful, she's my eyes," he said.

Boulter explained how he first experienced vision problems on a Scout trip 45 years ago. His disease, retinitis pigmentosa, progressed over time, first taking his peripheral vision. But he said it pays to focus not on the handicaps it brought, but the abilities he yet retains.

"It isn't what I can't do that matters; it's what I can do," he told the assembly. "We all have different limitations."

Rhett Jones, a mobility counselor for the Utah Division of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired, was born completely blind. He encouraged students not to feel threatened by their own challenges, but to work through them. He shared his personal experience as testimony: In addition to gainful employment, Jones is currently working toward his second master's degree.

"Try to figure out how to use what you have to accomplish what you want to do," he counseled. "I'm figuring out how to do things other people with sight are able to do."

Jones talked about how technological advances like text-to-speech software have enabled him to read textbooks without the delay blind people once suffered. But more than fancy equipment, he said he's learned depending on others is the most helpful tool in his toolbox.

"I don't think there's a lot of really successful people who do it on their own," he said. "One of the key things to success is to ask for help when we need it."