yann64andClaude Opus 5.5
cf3a03350c
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01YDRjtmAiNpo5mK5N3d7QwZ
22 lines
2.5 KiB
HTML
22 lines
2.5 KiB
HTML
{
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"title": "CLICK AND SPELL",
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"date": "1978-06-01",
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"years": [
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"1978"
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],
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"topics": [
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"Hardware"
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],
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"params": {
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"when": "JUNE 1978",
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"image": "/media/history/images/timeline_0678_clickspell_1.jpg",
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"oc_id": 36,
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"source": {
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"url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20211208043342/http://www.old-computers.com/history/detail.asp?n=36",
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"date": "2021-12-08"
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}
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}
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}
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<img src="/media/history/images/timeline_0678_clickspell_1.jpg"/> <br/><br/><p> In 1976, after having conquered a major part of the calculators market, the consumer products group at Texas Instruments was searching for another mountain to climb. First time the idea of a Speak and Spell product for children came up, TI management didn't take it seriously. However, Richard Wiggins, an engineer who was brand-new to TI at the time, took a look at the idea and said: "I think we can do it.". And they did: in june 1978, the speaking bright coloured box was launched. Six months later, the product was a Christmas season hit, and the same sentence resounded in every American toys stores: <br/><br/> <i>Hello! I am Speak & Spell, the electronic learning aid, that challenges you with random questions stored in my brain.</i> <br/><br/> Its popularity with its target audience was given a further boost when a certain adorable alien used it to help him "phone home" in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. Both parents and educators appreciated its value as a teaching tool, and their combined seals of approval made Speak & Spell a common sight in homes and schools alike. Its popularity also led to sequel electronic games for other areas of learning like Speak & Math and Speak & Read. <br/><br/> The technology behind the toy was a result of Texas Instruments early investigations into speech synthesis. The result was the TMS5110/5220 series, first low cost mass produced DSP chips. They allowed speech data to be stored in a highly compressed format, which was very important in the days when ROM space was expensive; and synthesized speech using a method know as Linear-Predictive Coding (LPC). More than 100 seconds of linguistic sounds could be stored into a 128 KB ROM chip. Same chips were used in the TI 99/4 Home Computer Voice module. <br/><br/> Nowadays, DSP technology is everywhere. People can now send voice as well as live video over a cellular phone. In 2000, the programmable DSP market generated more than $6 billion in sales. Texas Instruments claimed 48 percent of that market. <br/><br/> </p><img src="/media/history/images/timeline_0678_clickspell_2.jpg"/>
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