1963 Computer Speech synthesis IBM demo private 7" vocoder Bell Telephone Labs
$
60
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Description
This auction is for a fantastic Computer Speech record from Bell Telephone Laboratories from 1963. It's a 33 1/2" RPM, 7" record produced by Bell for educational use. The record is in great condition. The sleeve has some wear. Check out the photos!
More details:
Scarce one-sided private pressing issued by the folks behind the legendary Music From Mathematics and Voice Of The Computer early electronic music lps. This artifact presents the first ever recordings of electronic speech synthesis, as researched at Bell Labs by scientist D.H. VanLenten using an ancient punchcard-fed IBM mainframe computer. A narrator discusses the wonders of "speech artificially constructed from the basic building blocks of the English language" and the issues of timing, pitch, and accents, and provides several computerized speech examples including the "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet and the song "Bicycle Built for Two" (in 2 versions, one a capella and one accompanied by synthesized tones probably programmed by Max Mathews [though this is a different version from the track on the Music From Mathematics album]). This record was apparently distributed to school libraries around the US (reportedly making a memorable impression on many awestruck children), and inspired filmmaker Stanley Kubrick in his staging of HAL's death scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (when HAL sings "Bicycle Built for Two").
Starting in the late 1950s, Bell Labs hosted the first artists and scientists to experiment with computer music and speech, including Max Mathews, John R. Pierce, Newman Guttman, Jean-Claude Risset, James Tenney, Roger N. Shepard, and Edgard Varese. • This record will be of interest to fans of electronic, computer, and vocoder musicians like Herbert Eimert, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Paul Lansky, Jon Appleton, Cylob, Rephlex, Robert Moog, Bruce Haack, Vocoder, Italo, Luke Vibert, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Mu-Ziq, Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin, Laurie Anderson, Skinny Puppy, and Invisibl Skratch Piklz.
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