Speak & Spell (toy)
Encyclopedia
The Speak & Spell line is a series of electronic
handheld educational toys
created by Texas Instruments
that consist of a speech synthesizer
, a keyboard, and a receptor slot to receive one of a collection of ROM
game library modules (collectively covered under patent ). The first Speak & Spell was introduced at the summer Consumer Electronics Show
in June 1978, making it one of the earliest handheld electronic devices with a visual display to use interchangeable game cartridges.
(TI) during the late 1970s. Development began in 1976 with an initial budget of $25,000, as an outgrowth of TI
's research into speech synthesis
. The completed proof version of the first console utilized TI's trademarked Solid State Speech technology to store full words in a solid state
format similar to the manner in which calculators of the time stored numbers. Additionally purchased cartridges (called expansion modules) could be inserted behind the battery receptacle to provide new solid state libraries and new games. This represented the first time an educational toy utilized speech that was not recorded on tape or phonograph record (as with Mattel
's See 'n Say
line or the earlier Chatty Cathy
dolls).
and Speak & Math
. This series was a subset of TI's Learning Center product group and the Speak & Spell was released simultaneously with the Spelling B (a non-speech product designed to help children learn to spell), and the First Watch (designed to teach children to read digital and analog timepieces). The Speak & Spell was sold, with regional variations, in the United States
, Canada
, Australia
, in Europe
, and Japan
.
The toy was originally advertised as a tool for helping young children to learn to spell and pronounce over 200 commonly misspelled words. It shipped as a bundle with only the basic cartridge called Basic Unit (containing the minigames, Mystery Word, Secret Code, and Letter.)
(VFD) with a liquid crystal display
(LCD). Between 1989 and 1992 the Super Speak & Spell would see three redesigns as well. The 1992 Super Speak & Spell would mark the last release of the series.
Regional variations with different speech libraries and different games were released in at least 9 countries with seven language variations. Because the linguistic aspect of the games played on the Speak & Spell are of central importance to Speak & Spell titles, separate cartridge libraries were developed for English
(including American
and British
), Japanese
, German
, French
, Italian
, and Spanish
markets. Beyond the natural disinclination of consumers to purchase games in foreign languages, however, regional lockout
does not prevent the use of expansion module cartridges in consoles for which they were not designed. Since the layout of foreign editions is nearly identical (the only major differences being graphics, color, and placement of power/headset jacks), and the cartridges lacked a lockout, cartridges often bore instructions in multiple languages despite their designation for consumer groups that might not understand the language.
In 1980, the original Speak & Spell was redesigned to give it a membrane keyboard
in place of raised buttons. This version was nearly identical to the first release and with backward compatible
cartridge recognition common to all Speak & Spells except the first version of the Super Speak & Spell, the entire library of cartridges from the original release were available to the 1980 release. Outside of the United States, the 1980 release was marketed in the United Kingdom under the same name, in German as the Buddy (employing an umlaut
in place of the Speak & Spell's apostrophe
), and in French as La Dictée Magique (lit. The Magical Dictation).
In 1982, the Speak & Spell Compact was released at about half the size of the Speak & Spell and lacking the VFD
video component. The Speak & Spell Compact was a dedicated console
and only one other version, the Speak & Write was released for English
markets. Speak & Spell Compact sales were very poor in the United States, causing TI to send much of its excess stock abroad. UK Marketing Manager Martin Finn had the product retitled for the UK, and all existing units were recolored blue and repackaged.
In 1983, the Speak & Spell was again redesigned. The change was even more minute, however, representing nothing more substantial than a redesign of the faceplate graphics. This version was marketed first in Italian as Grillo Parlante (lit. the Talking Cricket
as the character of the book for children The Adventures of Pinocchio), and then later in the United States and the United Kingdom as the Speak & Spell, and in France as the Dictée Magique again.
The Super Speak & Spell was released in 1989 with a number of major changes. The display screen was changed to an LCD screen instead of the former VFD screen. The keyboard layout was also altered to match the standard QWERTY
keyboard rather than the ABC
keyboard. The general structure of the console was also altered so that the handle which had come at the top of the screen in prior Speak & Spells was now found on the bottom of the toy and ergonomic
features were added to the shape. Furthermore, game cartridges for the Super Speak & Spell were changed so that they were incompatible with prior Speak & Spells and the cartridge slot was similarly altered to prevent backward compatibility.
The following year the Super Speak & Spell was again majorly redesigned to return to a considerable degree to its prior Speak & Spell form. This version re-adopted the handle-on-top look of the previous models and resumed use of the original cartridges. The use of the LCD screen and the QWERTY keyboard were retained, however the keyboard gained an additional 5 letters (6 in some regions) to correspond with letters requiring diacritic
s. It was marketed first in Spanish as El Loro Parlanchín (The Chatty Parrot), and then later in the United States as the Super Speak & Spell, in French as La Super Dictée Magique, and in Italian as Grillo Parlante Più (lit. Speaking Cricket Plus).
In 1992, a third redesign of the Super Speak & Spell was made for the Spanish market only. The new version was nearly identical to the prior El Loro Parlanchín save for the name which became El Loro (Professor Parrot).
(LPC) model by using pipelined electronic DSP
logic. A variant of this chip with a very similar voice would eventually be utilized in certain Chrysler
vehicles in the 1980s as the Electronic Voice Alert
.
Speech synthesis data (phoneme data
) for the spoken words were stored on a pair of 128 Kbit metal gate PMOS ROMs. 128 Kbit was, at the time the largest capacity ROM in the late 1970s. Additional memory module cartridges could be interchangeably plugged into a slot in the battery compartment and selected via a button on the keyboard. The technique used to create the words was to have a professional speaker speak the words. The utterances were captured and processed using a mini-computer. Finally the data were hand edited to fix any voicing errors while reducing the data rate to an optimal level. The stored data were for the specific words and phrases used in the Speak & Spell. The data rate was about 1,000 bits per second.
The video-display employed in the Speak & Spell was a vacuum fluorescent display
(VFD). The later Super Speak & Spell model, had a much slimmer case and an LCD
screen rather than a VFD screen.
The unit could use either 4 "C" batteries or 6 volt DC
power adapter with positive tip polarity.
that provide additional content without providing additional functionality. These cartridges are plugged into a slot near the battery compartment in order to introduce new software libraries. Word and game lists are of differing lengths depending upon the cartridge and the word lists in models marketed for different languages reflect the language marketed for. Separate word lists also exist for regional variants such as the American and British English versions.
The word list used in each of the regional models reflects the recommendations of educators in each country. The English, French, German and Italian versions were all created by a team of non-specialists, in TI's plant near Antibes, France, under the watchful eye of Larry Brantingham who had patented the underlying technology.
Examples of educational games that could be played using Speak & Spell cartridges include:
The "Secret Code" mini-game would encrypt or decrypt "words" (really, any string of up to 8 letters) by matching up two sets of the alphabet, slightly askew. In the game P and Q match up and run in opposite directions:
Percom Data Company offered a PC Card called "Speak-2-Me-2" which installed into the battery compartment of the Speak & Spell, and connected via cable to a TRS-80
.
East Coast Micro Products offered hardware to interface 6502
-based computers such as the Commodore 64
and Apple IIe
with the Speak & Spell. A program called "S.peek.uP" was marketed which could control this hardware.
The February 1983 issue of Computers & Electronics contained instructions for interfacing a Speak & Spell with a Sinclair ZX-80
a Sinclair ZX-81
, or a Timex 1000
.
Texas Instruments itself later adapted the Speak & Spell's technology into a speech synthesizer accessory for its popular TI-99/4A
computer.
, these emulations often are the result of nostalgic sentiment
for the 1980s. No true emulator of the Speak & Spell, running the original code, yet exists.
Examples of emulators generally available online include:
The Speak & Spell has been employed in recent years in commercial music as an instrument either in its original form or as a modified "bent" circuit
instrument (see below). Artists like French electronic musician Jean Michel Jarre
, have used the musical samples from the Speak & Spell's opening sequence in their songs Artists in various other (typically electronic) genres have employed the non-musical vocal portions of the Speak & Spell to create vocal parts in their songs. Thus, Speak-&-Spell-generated speech synthesis has featured in Alternative music (with artists such as Beck
and Coldplay
), Electronic music
(with such groups as Kraftwerk
), in Synthpop
music (with such groups as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
and Freezepop), House music
(e.g. Sōta Fujimori), Electropop (e.g. TLC
), Nu metal
(e.g. Limp Bizkit
), Christian rock
(e.g. Resurrection Band
, Family Force 5
), Pop
(e.g. Cheetah Girls), and Children's music
(e.g. Tickle Tune Typhoon).
British synthpop
band Depeche Mode
's 1981 debut album, Speak & Spell
is named in reference to the Speak & Spell.
The Speak & Spell was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009.
s have also used modified "circuit bent
" Speak & Spell units in their compositions. By opening the Speak & Spell's case, cross-wiring terminals
, and installing electronic components such as switch
es and potentiometers, amateur hobbyists purposely disrupt normal functioning of the Speak & Spell's membrane keyboard matrix circuit
in order to create new sounds. These modifications act to overwhelm the unit's keyboard switch matrix to produce an effect known in the field of electronics as key jamming or ghosting. This effect can be triggered in the Speak & Spell without making modifications if more than 3 keys in the same row are depressed simultaneously however, within the circuit bending culture, emphasis is given to the fact that these units are being used as instruments and thus externally manipulable components are often accentuated. Great attention may be given to enhancing the visual aesthetics of the units by adding decorations and repainting "bent" Speak & Spells, and these units have been traded and sold online and within the circuit bender community.
Examples of artists who have used circuit bent Speak & Spells in their compositions include Beck
, CocoRosie
, Eisbrecher
, Experimental Audio Research
, Fantômas
, Scrabbel
, Venetian Snares
, and Claude Woodward The Sonic Manipulator.
The Speak & Spell features in various electronics museums such as the Computer History Museum
and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History
due to its seminal influence in the field of modern speech synthesis
. The Speak & Spell is also featured in the Game On exhibition
as an example of a handheld video game.
Film
The Speak & Spell has shown up numerous times in various television shows, films, and game shows. Perhaps most notably, a Speak & Spell has a prominent role as a key component of the alien creature's homebuilt interstellar communicator in the Steven Spielberg
motion picture E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
.
Speak & Spells also make appearances in movies such as Disney's Toy Story
and Toy Story 2
(where the game device is a character named "Mr. Spell"), Bride of Chucky
(where the possessed doll, Chucky plays with one while imprisoned in a crib), in Poltergeist III
(used by the character Carol Anne Freeling) and Fortress
(where the director Paul threatens the intelligent supercomputer Zed-10 who made a mistake that it would be lucky if it ends up as the Speak & Spell). The Speak & Spell has also shown up several times on internet Flash cartoons such as Homestar Runner
(where a robot is constructed from a box of Grape-Nuts
and a Speak & Spell).
Music videos
The Speak & Spell appears prominently in Owl City
's music video "Fireflies", where it spells the lyrics when the correspondant lyrics are said.
Television
The Speak & Spell also appears in The Penguins of Madagascar
television series on Nickelodeon
under the ownership of the penguins. They use it as a voice synthesizer, although it didn't have really the ability to say words.
Other
Dane Cook
had a Speak & Spell joke, stating he had an evil one as a child (ABCDEFG I will kill your family)
There is a Speak & Spell character in the Annoying Orange called Spell & Speak
was published in 1980 with a shape identical to the Speak & Spell but with different game features and a different color scheme. Where the American Speak & Spell had been colored red with yellow and orange accents, the American Speak & Read was yellow with blue and green accents. Game cartridges for the Speak & Read were identical in shape to those of the main Speak & Spell line, and they could be physically inserted into units from the wrong line, however they did not function except in members of their own line. The Speak & Read was designed to focus on reading comprehension in children of ages 4–8 with a library of over 250 basic words.
The Speak & Read was very minutely redesigned in 1986, under the same name, with the new version representing nothing more substantial than a redesign of the faceplate graphics. In 1988 the Super Speak & Read was released as a major redesign to feature a suitcase-like flip-open appearance. Cartridges were redesigned to be thinner and of a different shape, bearing some resemblance to the cartridges of TI's Touch & Discover line. Additionally, the keyboard was removed completely and a matrix of membrane buttons took its place similarly to the position sensitive "keyboard" of the Touch & Discover consoles. Each cartridge came with a work-booklet that would be laid out in an open position in the center of the Super Speak & Read and as questions were asked of the player he would press the appropriate portion of the work-booklet to depress the membrane button beneath. This was the last member of the Speak & Read line under this name, however the Ready... Set... Read! (sharing a highly similar design layout) and later Magic Reading Desk (featuring a modified Ready... Set... Read! layout) are considered the Speak & Read's spiritual successors. Both Ready... Set... Read! and Magic Reading Desk cartridges are identical in design to the Super Speak & Read's cartridges.
(Sold as "Speak and Maths" in some countries) was published in 1980 with a shape identical to both the Speak & Spell and the Speak & Read
but with a completely different keyboard layout, different game features, and a different color scheme. Where the American Speak & Spell had been colored red with yellow and orange accents, the American Speak & Math was gray with blue and orange highlights. The Speak & Math was designed to focus on mathematics in children of ages 6–12 with a library of over 100,000 random and preprogrammed problems. It was regarded as the spiritual successor to TI's earlier DataMan series, with the difference mainly relating to the addition of speech synthesizing software and the visual display. The Speak & Math was only released to American and British markets.
In 1982, a compact version of the Speak & Math was developed contemporaneously with the Speak & Spell Compact. This version was only released in French as Les Maths Magique (lit. The Magical Math). A redesigned version was developed in 1985 for British markets under the name of Maths marvel. This was later released in Italian as Dotto Conta-Parla, in French as le Calcul magique (lit. Magical Calculator), and in German as Mathe-Fix.
The Speak & Math was very minutely redesigned in 1986, under the same name, with the new version representing nothing more substantial than a redesign of the faceplate graphics. In 1990 the Super Speak & Math was released as a major redesign similar to the first version of the Super Speak & Spell. As with the Super Speak & Spell, the display screen of the Super Speak & Math was changed to an LCD screen instead of the former VFD screen. The keyboard was also expanded and given more functions. The general structure of the console was also altered similarly to the Super Speak & Spell such that the handle which had come at the top of the screen in prior Speak & Math units was now found on the bottom of the toy and ergonomic
features were added to the shape.
titles and employed similar technology although they did not involve the use of Solid State Speech technology. Such games included:
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
handheld educational toys
Educational game
Educational games are games that have been designed to teach people about a certain subject, expand concepts, reinforce development, understand an historical event or culture, or assist them in learning a skill as they play...
created by Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
that consist of a speech synthesizer
Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
, a keyboard, and a receptor slot to receive one of a collection of ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
game library modules (collectively covered under patent ). The first Speak & Spell was introduced at the summer Consumer Electronics Show
Consumer Electronics Show
The International Consumer Electronics Show is a major technology-related trade show held each January in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Not open to the public, the Consumer Electronics Association-sponsored show typically hosts previews of products and new...
in June 1978, making it one of the earliest handheld electronic devices with a visual display to use interchangeable game cartridges.
Background
The Speak & Spell was created by a small team of engineers led by Paul Breedlove, himself an engineer, with Texas InstrumentsTexas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
(TI) during the late 1970s. Development began in 1976 with an initial budget of $25,000, as an outgrowth of TI
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
's research into speech synthesis
Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
. The completed proof version of the first console utilized TI's trademarked Solid State Speech technology to store full words in a solid state
Solid state (electronics)
Solid-state electronics are those circuits or devices built entirely from solid materials and in which the electrons, or other charge carriers, are confined entirely within the solid material...
format similar to the manner in which calculators of the time stored numbers. Additionally purchased cartridges (called expansion modules) could be inserted behind the battery receptacle to provide new solid state libraries and new games. This represented the first time an educational toy utilized speech that was not recorded on tape or phonograph record (as with Mattel
Mattel
Mattel, Inc. is the world's largest toy company based on revenue. The products it produces include Fisher Price, Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls, board games, and, in the early 1980s, video game consoles. The company's name is derived from...
's See 'n Say
See 'n Say
See 'n Say is an educational toy created by the toy company Mattel in 1965 after the success of its talking Chatty Cathy doll. In the 1960s, after introducing a line of talking dolls that said different phrases when a string protruding from their upper back was pulled, Mattel trademarked the word...
line or the earlier Chatty Cathy
Chatty Cathy
Chatty Cathy is a doll manufactured by the Mattel toy company from 1959 to 1965. The doll was first released in stores and appeared in television commercials beginning in 1960. Chatty Cathy celebrated her 50th birthday in 2010....
dolls).
The original Speak & Spell
The original Speak & Spell was the first of a three-part talking educational toy series that also included Speak & ReadSpeak & Read
Speak & Read was an electronic learning aid made in 1980, by Texas Instruments. Speak and Read was part of a family of learning toys aimed at different subjects, i.e. "Speak & Math" and "Speak and Spell"....
and Speak & Math
Speak & Math
The Speak & Math was a popular and revolutionary electronic toy created by Texas Instruments in 1980. Speak & Math was one of a three-part talking educational toy series that also included Speak & Spell and Speak & Read...
. This series was a subset of TI's Learning Center product group and the Speak & Spell was released simultaneously with the Spelling B (a non-speech product designed to help children learn to spell), and the First Watch (designed to teach children to read digital and analog timepieces). The Speak & Spell was sold, with regional variations, in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
The toy was originally advertised as a tool for helping young children to learn to spell and pronounce over 200 commonly misspelled words. It shipped as a bundle with only the basic cartridge called Basic Unit (containing the minigames, Mystery Word, Secret Code, and Letter.)
Later Speak & Spell models
Between its release and 1983, the Speak & Spell was redesigned twice under the name Speak & Spell. It was completely recreated in 1982 as the Speak & Spell Compact (a version lacking a visual display), and in 1989 the Super Speak & Spell was released to replace the original vacuum fluorescent displayVacuum fluorescent display
A vacuum fluorescent display is a display device used commonly on consumer-electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens. Invented in Japan in 1967, the displays became common on calculators and other consumer electronics devices...
(VFD) with a liquid crystal display
Liquid crystal display
A liquid crystal display is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals . LCs do not emit light directly....
(LCD). Between 1989 and 1992 the Super Speak & Spell would see three redesigns as well. The 1992 Super Speak & Spell would mark the last release of the series.
Regional variations with different speech libraries and different games were released in at least 9 countries with seven language variations. Because the linguistic aspect of the games played on the Speak & Spell are of central importance to Speak & Spell titles, separate cartridge libraries were developed for English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
(including American
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
and British
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
), Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
markets. Beyond the natural disinclination of consumers to purchase games in foreign languages, however, regional lockout
Regional lockout
Regional lockout is the programming practice, code, chip, or physical barrier used to prevent the playing of media designed for a device from the country where it is marketed on the version of the same device marketed in another country.-Video games:...
does not prevent the use of expansion module cartridges in consoles for which they were not designed. Since the layout of foreign editions is nearly identical (the only major differences being graphics, color, and placement of power/headset jacks), and the cartridges lacked a lockout, cartridges often bore instructions in multiple languages despite their designation for consumer groups that might not understand the language.
In 1980, the original Speak & Spell was redesigned to give it a membrane keyboard
Membrane keyboard
A membrane keyboard is a computer keyboard whose "keys" are not separate, moving parts, as with the majority of other keyboards, but rather are pressure pads that have only outlines and symbols printed on a flat, flexible surface...
in place of raised buttons. This version was nearly identical to the first release and with backward compatible
Backward compatibility
In the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...
cartridge recognition common to all Speak & Spells except the first version of the Super Speak & Spell, the entire library of cartridges from the original release were available to the 1980 release. Outside of the United States, the 1980 release was marketed in the United Kingdom under the same name, in German as the Buddy (employing an umlaut
Umlaut (diacritic)
The diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
in place of the Speak & Spell's apostrophe
Apostrophe
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
), and in French as La Dictée Magique (lit. The Magical Dictation).
In 1982, the Speak & Spell Compact was released at about half the size of the Speak & Spell and lacking the VFD
Vacuum fluorescent display
A vacuum fluorescent display is a display device used commonly on consumer-electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens. Invented in Japan in 1967, the displays became common on calculators and other consumer electronics devices...
video component. The Speak & Spell Compact was a dedicated console
Dedicated console
A dedicated console is a video game console that is dedicated to a built in game or games, and is not equipped for additional games, via cartridges or other media.- History :...
and only one other version, the Speak & Write was released for English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
markets. Speak & Spell Compact sales were very poor in the United States, causing TI to send much of its excess stock abroad. UK Marketing Manager Martin Finn had the product retitled for the UK, and all existing units were recolored blue and repackaged.
In 1983, the Speak & Spell was again redesigned. The change was even more minute, however, representing nothing more substantial than a redesign of the faceplate graphics. This version was marketed first in Italian as Grillo Parlante (lit. the Talking Cricket
The Talking Cricket
The Talking Cricket is a fictional character who appears in Carlo Collodi's 1883 book The Adventures of Pinocchio .-Role:...
as the character of the book for children The Adventures of Pinocchio), and then later in the United States and the United Kingdom as the Speak & Spell, and in France as the Dictée Magique again.
The Super Speak & Spell was released in 1989 with a number of major changes. The display screen was changed to an LCD screen instead of the former VFD screen. The keyboard layout was also altered to match the standard QWERTY
QWERTY
QWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six letters appearing in the topleft letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the...
keyboard rather than the ABC
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
keyboard. The general structure of the console was also altered so that the handle which had come at the top of the screen in prior Speak & Spells was now found on the bottom of the toy and ergonomic
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study of designing equipment and devices that fit the human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities.The International Ergonomics Association defines ergonomics as follows:...
features were added to the shape. Furthermore, game cartridges for the Super Speak & Spell were changed so that they were incompatible with prior Speak & Spells and the cartridge slot was similarly altered to prevent backward compatibility.
The following year the Super Speak & Spell was again majorly redesigned to return to a considerable degree to its prior Speak & Spell form. This version re-adopted the handle-on-top look of the previous models and resumed use of the original cartridges. The use of the LCD screen and the QWERTY keyboard were retained, however the keyboard gained an additional 5 letters (6 in some regions) to correspond with letters requiring diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s. It was marketed first in Spanish as El Loro Parlanchín (The Chatty Parrot), and then later in the United States as the Super Speak & Spell, in French as La Super Dictée Magique, and in Italian as Grillo Parlante Più (lit. Speaking Cricket Plus).
In 1992, a third redesign of the Super Speak & Spell was made for the Spanish market only. The new version was nearly identical to the prior El Loro Parlanchín save for the name which became El Loro (Professor Parrot).
Electronics
The Speak & Spell used the first single-chip voice synthesizer, the TMC0280, later called the TI TMS5100, which utilized a 10th-order linear predictive codingLinear predictive coding
Linear predictive coding is a tool used mostly in audio signal processing and speech processing for representing the spectral envelope of a digital signal of speech in compressed form, using the information of a linear predictive model...
(LPC) model by using pipelined electronic DSP
Digital signal processing
Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...
logic. A variant of this chip with a very similar voice would eventually be utilized in certain Chrysler
Chrysler
Chrysler Group LLC is a multinational automaker headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, USA. Chrysler was first organized as the Chrysler Corporation in 1925....
vehicles in the 1980s as the Electronic Voice Alert
Electronic Voice Alert
The Electronic Voice Alert, or EVA, was an option available on many Chrysler Corporation K-car-based vehicles in the mid-1980s. Using technology from Texas Instruments similar to what was used in the Speak & Spell, the EVA would automatically lower the radio volume and deliver eleven different...
.
Speech synthesis data (phoneme data
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
) for the spoken words were stored on a pair of 128 Kbit metal gate PMOS ROMs. 128 Kbit was, at the time the largest capacity ROM in the late 1970s. Additional memory module cartridges could be interchangeably plugged into a slot in the battery compartment and selected via a button on the keyboard. The technique used to create the words was to have a professional speaker speak the words. The utterances were captured and processed using a mini-computer. Finally the data were hand edited to fix any voicing errors while reducing the data rate to an optimal level. The stored data were for the specific words and phrases used in the Speak & Spell. The data rate was about 1,000 bits per second.
The video-display employed in the Speak & Spell was a vacuum fluorescent display
Vacuum fluorescent display
A vacuum fluorescent display is a display device used commonly on consumer-electronics equipment such as video cassette recorders, car radios, and microwave ovens. Invented in Japan in 1967, the displays became common on calculators and other consumer electronics devices...
(VFD). The later Super Speak & Spell model, had a much slimmer case and an LCD
Liquid crystal display
A liquid crystal display is a flat panel display, electronic visual display, or video display that uses the light modulating properties of liquid crystals . LCs do not emit light directly....
screen rather than a VFD screen.
The unit could use either 4 "C" batteries or 6 volt DC
Direct current
Direct current is the unidirectional flow of electric charge. Direct current is produced by such sources as batteries, thermocouples, solar cells, and commutator-type electric machines of the dynamo type. Direct current may flow in a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through...
power adapter with positive tip polarity.
Cartridges
Cartridges (also known as expansion modules) are freely exchangeable ROM librariesROM cartridge
A ROM cartridge, sometimes referred to as a cart, is a removable enclosure containing read-only memory devices designed to be connected to a computer or games console....
that provide additional content without providing additional functionality. These cartridges are plugged into a slot near the battery compartment in order to introduce new software libraries. Word and game lists are of differing lengths depending upon the cartridge and the word lists in models marketed for different languages reflect the language marketed for. Separate word lists also exist for regional variants such as the American and British English versions.
The word list used in each of the regional models reflects the recommendations of educators in each country. The English, French, German and Italian versions were all created by a team of non-specialists, in TI's plant near Antibes, France, under the watchful eye of Larry Brantingham who had patented the underlying technology.
| Console | Module Title | Date | Color |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speak & Spell (1978) | Basic Unit | 1978 | Red |
| Vowel Power | 1978 | Red | |
| Super Stumpers 4-6 | 1979 | Red | |
| Super Stumpers 7-8 | 1979 | Red | |
| Basic Builders | 1979 | Red | |
| Mighty Verbs | 1979 | Red | |
| Speak & Spell (1978, UK) | Vowel Power | 1978 | Red |
| Mighty Verbs | 1979 | Red | |
| Speak & Spell (1980) | Homonym Heroes | 1980 | Red |
| Noun Endings | 1980 | Red | |
| Magnificent Modifiers | 1980 | Red | |
| Vowel Ventures | 1980 | Red | |
| E.T. Fantasy Module | 1982 | Red | |
| La Dictée Magique | Les Mots De Base Module No 1 | Red | |
| Les Mots Difficiles Module No 2 | Red | ||
| Les Animaux Familiers | Red | ||
| Les Magasins De La Rue Module No 4 | Red | ||
| Les Extra-Terrestres Module No 5 | Red | ||
| Grillo Parlante | SuperModulo | Red | |
| Super Speak & Spell | Words, Words, Words | Yellow | |
| Words Around Us | Gray | ||
| Expansion 3 | Blue | ||
| El Loro Parlanchín | Módulo de Extensión No 1 | 1990 | Blue |
| La Super Dictée Magique | Module d'Extension Anglais 1 | 1991 | Blue |
| Module d'Extension No 2 | 1991 | Blue |
Examples of educational games that could be played using Speak & Spell cartridges include:
- Say It - The classic word-spelling game wherein the player must spell ten words after hearing them "spoken" by the unit. The E.T. Fantasy Module tie-inTie-inA tie-in is an authorized product based on a media property a company is releasing, such as a movie or video/DVD, computer game, video game, television program/television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property...
(due to the toy's notable appearance in the movie E.T. the Extra-TerrestrialE.T. the Extra-TerrestrialE.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
) asked players to spell such words as "geranium", "universe", and "creature". - Mystery Word - An electronic version of hangmanHangman (game)Hangman is a paper and pencil guessing game for two or more players. One player thinks of a word and the other tries to guess it by suggesting letters.-Overview:...
- Secret Code - A code-generating program in which the player enters a word on the Speak & Spell and the console returns the word in code.
- Letter - Another algorithm that allows the player to change a word he has entered by shifting its letters several spaces down the alphabet.
- Drop It - A Super Speak & Spell game in which the player will see how new words are made by adding prefixes and suffixes.
- Memory - A Super Speak & Spell game in which letter recognition and visual memory skills are tested.
- Mystery - A Super Speak & Spell game in which letter patterns in words and visual memory are developed.
- Mix Up - A Super Speak & Spell game in which word patterns and the relationships between letter sounds and spelling are tested.
- Same As - A Super Speak & Spell game in which homophones are tested.
- A.C.E. - A Super Speak & Spell game in which abbreviations, contractions, and word endings are tested.
- Race - A Super Speak & Spell game in which fast recall, accurate spelling, and touch-typing skills are tested with time limits.
The "Secret Code" mini-game would encrypt or decrypt "words" (really, any string of up to 8 letters) by matching up two sets of the alphabet, slightly askew. In the game P and Q match up and run in opposite directions:
-
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z -
F E D C B A Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G
Home computer adaptions
Several commercial retailers offered hardware and software which allowed home computers to inferface with the Speak & Spell's hardware and access its capabilities.Percom Data Company offered a PC Card called "Speak-2-Me-2" which installed into the battery compartment of the Speak & Spell, and connected via cable to a TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
.
East Coast Micro Products offered hardware to interface 6502
MOS Technology 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
-based computers such as the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
and Apple IIe
Apple IIe
The Apple IIe is the third model in the Apple II series of personal computers produced by Apple Computer. The e in the name stands for enhanced, referring to the fact that several popular features were now built-in that were only available as upgrades and add-ons in earlier models...
with the Speak & Spell. A program called "S.peek.uP" was marketed which could control this hardware.
The February 1983 issue of Computers & Electronics contained instructions for interfacing a Speak & Spell with a Sinclair ZX-80
Sinclair ZX80
The Sinclair ZX80 is a home computer brought to market in 1980 by Science of Cambridge Ltd. . It is notable for being the first computer available in the United Kingdom for less than a hundred pounds...
a Sinclair ZX-81
Sinclair ZX81
The ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public...
, or a Timex 1000
Timex Sinclair 1000
The Timex Sinclair 1000 was the first computer produced by Timex Sinclair, a joint-venture between Timex Corporation and Sinclair Research. It was launched in July 1982....
.
Texas Instruments itself later adapted the Speak & Spell's technology into a speech synthesizer accessory for its popular TI-99/4A
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
The Texas Instruments TI-99/4A was an early home computer, released in June 1981, originally at a price of USD $525. It was an enhanced version of the less-successful—and quite rare—TI-99/4 model, which was released in late 1979 at a price of $1,150...
computer.
Emulation
A number of emulations (really simulations, as they don't run the original code) of the Speak & Spell have shown up online in recent years with varying degrees of functionality. Often programmed for FlashAdobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, these emulations often are the result of nostalgic sentiment
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
for the 1980s. No true emulator of the Speak & Spell, running the original code, yet exists.
Examples of emulators generally available online include:
- SASS - A fully functional non-Flash executableExecutableIn computing, an executable file causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions," as opposed to a data file that must be parsed by a program to be meaningful. These instructions are traditionally machine code instructions for a physical CPU...
emulator created by Mike Green in 1999 - Speak & Spell Online - a Flash-based web application with partial functionality created by Jake Smith in 2002
- Speak & Spell Emulator - a Flash-based web application with full functionality created by Kevin St.Onge in 2006
In commercial music
Circuit bending
Circuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and small digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators....
instrument (see below). Artists like French electronic musician Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel Jarre
Jean Michel André Jarre is a French composer, performer and music producer. He is a pioneer in the electronic, ambient and New Age genres, and known as an organiser of outdoor spectacles of his music featuring lights, laser displays, and fireworks.Jarre was raised in Lyon by his mother and...
, have used the musical samples from the Speak & Spell's opening sequence in their songs Artists in various other (typically electronic) genres have employed the non-musical vocal portions of the Speak & Spell to create vocal parts in their songs. Thus, Speak-&-Spell-generated speech synthesis has featured in Alternative music (with artists such as Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
and Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...
), Electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
(with such groups as Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
), in Synthpop
Synthpop
Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...
music (with such groups as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are a synthpop group whose founding members are originally from the Wirral Peninsula, England...
and Freezepop), House music
House music
House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago, Illinois, United States in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized in mid-1980s discothèques catering to the African-American, Latino American, and gay communities; first in Chicago circa 1984, then in other...
(e.g. Sōta Fujimori), Electropop (e.g. TLC
TLC (band)
TLC is an American musical trio whose repertoire spanned R&B, hip-hop, soul, funk, and new jack swing. Originally consisting of singer Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, rapper-singer Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and singer Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas it found success in the 1990s while also enduring a series of spats...
), Nu metal
Nu metal
Nu metal is a subgenre of heavy metal. It is a fusion genre which combines elements of heavy metal with other genres, including grunge and hip hop...
(e.g. Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit is an American rock band from Jacksonville, Florida. Formed in 1995, the group's lineup consists of Fred Durst , Wes Borland , Sam Rivers , John Otto and DJ Lethal . The band achieved mainstream success with their second studio album Significant Other, released in 1999...
), Christian rock
Christian rock
Christian rock is a form of rock music played by individuals and bands whose members are Christians and who often focus the lyrics on matters concerned with the Christian faith. The extent to which their lyrics are explicitly Christian varies between bands...
(e.g. Resurrection Band
Resurrection Band
Resurrection Band, also known as Rez Band or REZ, was a Christian rock band formed in 1972. They were part of the Jesus People USA Christian community in Chicago and most of its members have continued in that community to this day. Known for their blend of blues-rock and hard rock, Resurrection...
, Family Force 5
Family Force 5
Family Force 5 is a Christian crunk rock band from Atlanta, Georgia. They consist of Solomon "Soul Glow Activatur" Olds, Jacob "Crouton" Olds, Joshua "Fatty" Olds, Nathan "Nadaddy" Currin, and Derek "Chap Stique" Mount...
), Pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
(e.g. Cheetah Girls), and Children's music
Children's music
Children's music is used here to refer to music composed and performed for children by adults. In European influenced contexts this means music, usually songs, written specifically for a juvenile audience. The composers are usually adults. Children's music has historically held both entertainment...
(e.g. Tickle Tune Typhoon).
British synthpop
Synthpop
Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...
band Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...
's 1981 debut album, Speak & Spell
Speak & Spell (album)
Speak & Spell is the first album from the British electronic group Depeche Mode, recorded and released in 1981. The album peaked at #10 in the UK Albums Chart.-Overview:This was the only Depeche Mode album with Vince Clarke as a member of the band...
is named in reference to the Speak & Spell.
The Speak & Spell was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009.
Circuit bending
Some musicianMusician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
s have also used modified "circuit bent
Circuit bending
Circuit bending is the creative customization of the circuits within electronic devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and small digital synthesizers to create new musical or visual instruments and sound generators....
" Speak & Spell units in their compositions. By opening the Speak & Spell's case, cross-wiring terminals
Terminal (electronics)
A terminal is the point at which a conductor from an electrical component, device or network comes to an end and provides a point of connection to external circuits. A terminal may simply be the end of a wire or it may be fitted with a connector or fastener...
, and installing electronic components such as switch
Switch
In electronics, a switch is an electrical component that can break an electrical circuit, interrupting the current or diverting it from one conductor to another....
es and potentiometers, amateur hobbyists purposely disrupt normal functioning of the Speak & Spell's membrane keyboard matrix circuit
Keyboard matrix (music)
Most electronic keyboards used in synthesizers, electronic organs, and digital pianos use a keyboard matrix circuit to connect the switches for each key. In this matrix circuit, the rows and columns are made up of wiring...
in order to create new sounds. These modifications act to overwhelm the unit's keyboard switch matrix to produce an effect known in the field of electronics as key jamming or ghosting. This effect can be triggered in the Speak & Spell without making modifications if more than 3 keys in the same row are depressed simultaneously however, within the circuit bending culture, emphasis is given to the fact that these units are being used as instruments and thus externally manipulable components are often accentuated. Great attention may be given to enhancing the visual aesthetics of the units by adding decorations and repainting "bent" Speak & Spells, and these units have been traded and sold online and within the circuit bender community.
Examples of artists who have used circuit bent Speak & Spells in their compositions include Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
, CocoRosie
CocoRosie
CocoRosie is a musical group formed in 2003 by sisters Bianca "Coco" and Sierra "Rosie" Casady. The sisters were born and raised in the United States, but formed the band in Paris after meeting for the first time in years...
, Eisbrecher
Eisbrecher
Eisbrecher is a German Neue Deutsche Härte band that consists primarily of Alexander Wesselsky and Noel Pix , with live support from Jürgen Plangger , Domonik Palmer , Achim Färber . In the United States and Canada, their record label is currently Metropolis Records...
, Experimental Audio Research
EAR (band)
Experimental Audio Research is a group formed around Peter Kember , formerly of Spacemen 3. To quote from the liner notes of the first E.A.R. full-length release, Mesmerised, "E.A.R. is a loose affiliation of non-resident "sound makers" including from time to time Sonic Boom , Kevin Martin , Kevin...
, Fantômas
Fantômas (band)
Fantômas is an avant-garde metal supergroup formed in 1998 in California, United States. The band is named after Fantômas, a supervillain featured in a series of crime novels popular in France before World War I and in film, most notably in the 60s French movie series.-History:Fantômas began just...
, Scrabbel
Scrabbel
Scrabbel was formed in 1999 by two old high school friends Dan Lee and Becky Barron. On the strength of their debut show in 2000 at a sold out event for the San Francisco Intl' Asian American Film Festival, they were approached by a label to record a record. They released their first full length in...
, Venetian Snares
Venetian Snares
Venetian Snares is the main performing alias of Canadian electronic musician Aaron Funk .From Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Funk is known for making electronic music often in odd numbered time signatures...
, and Claude Woodward The Sonic Manipulator.
Notable appearances in other media
Museums and displaysThe Speak & Spell features in various electronics museums such as the Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History
National Museum of American History
The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. Among the items on display are the original Star-Spangled Banner and Archie Bunker's...
due to its seminal influence in the field of modern speech synthesis
Speech synthesis
Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware...
. The Speak & Spell is also featured in the Game On exhibition
Game On (exhibition)
Game On is an exhibition organised and toured by the Barbican Art Gallery. The exhibition displays an historical view of video game development from early arcade games to the present. First featuring at the Barbican Art Gallery in 2002, the exhibition is claimed to have been seen by over 1...
as an example of a handheld video game.
Film
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
motion picture E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
.
Speak & Spells also make appearances in movies such as Disney's Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
and Toy Story 2
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 2 is a 1999 American computer animated film directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Lee Unkrich and Ash Brannon. It is the sequel to the 1995 film Toy Story, released by Walt Disney Pictures and the third film to be produced by Pixar...
(where the game device is a character named "Mr. Spell"), Bride of Chucky
Bride of Chucky
Bride of Chucky is a 1998 American comedy horror film directed by Chinese director Ronny Yu. It is the fourth entry in the Child's Play series. The film stars Jennifer Tilly and Brad Dourif...
(where the possessed doll, Chucky plays with one while imprisoned in a crib), in Poltergeist III
Poltergeist III
Poltergeist III is a 1988 American horror film. It is the third and final film of the Poltergeist film series...
(used by the character Carol Anne Freeling) and Fortress
Fortress (1993 film)
Fortress is a 1993 science fiction film directed by Stuart Gordon and shot at Warner Brothers Movie World in Queensland, Australia. The story takes place in a dystopian future. The main character in the movie, John Henry Brennick and his wife Karen B...
(where the director Paul threatens the intelligent supercomputer Zed-10 who made a mistake that it would be lucky if it ends up as the Speak & Spell). The Speak & Spell has also shown up several times on internet Flash cartoons such as Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner is a Flash animated Internet cartoon. It mixes surreal humor with references to retro pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music.The cartoons are nominally centered on the title character, Homestar Runner...
(where a robot is constructed from a box of Grape-Nuts
Grape-Nuts
Grape-Nuts is a breakfast cereal developed by C. W. Post in 1897. Post was a patient and later competitor of the 19th-century breakfast food innovator, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Despite its name, the cereal contains neither grapes nor nuts. The cereal is actually made from wheat and barley, in later...
and a Speak & Spell).
Music videos
The Speak & Spell appears prominently in Owl City
Owl City
Owl City is an American electronica musical project by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Young formed in 2007 in Owatonna, Minnesota. Young created the project while experimenting with music in his parents' basement...
's music video "Fireflies", where it spells the lyrics when the correspondant lyrics are said.
Television
The Speak & Spell also appears in The Penguins of Madagascar
The Penguins of Madagascar
The Penguins of Madagascar is an American CGI animated television series airing on Nickelodeon. It stars nine characters from the DreamWorks Animation animated film Madagascar: The penguins Skipper , Kowalski , Private , and Rico ; the lemurs King Julien , Maurice , and Mort...
television series on Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
under the ownership of the penguins. They use it as a voice synthesizer, although it didn't have really the ability to say words.
Other
Dane Cook
Dane Cook
Dane Jeffrey Cook is an American stand-up comedian and film actor. He has released five comedy albums: Harmful If Swallowed; Retaliation; Vicious Circle; Rough Around The Edges: Live From Madison Square Garden; and Isolated Incident. In 2006, Retaliation became the highest charting comedy album...
had a Speak & Spell joke, stating he had an evil one as a child (ABCDEFG I will kill your family)
There is a Speak & Spell character in the Annoying Orange called Spell & Speak
Speak & Read line
The Speak & ReadSpeak & Read
Speak & Read was an electronic learning aid made in 1980, by Texas Instruments. Speak and Read was part of a family of learning toys aimed at different subjects, i.e. "Speak & Math" and "Speak and Spell"....
was published in 1980 with a shape identical to the Speak & Spell but with different game features and a different color scheme. Where the American Speak & Spell had been colored red with yellow and orange accents, the American Speak & Read was yellow with blue and green accents. Game cartridges for the Speak & Read were identical in shape to those of the main Speak & Spell line, and they could be physically inserted into units from the wrong line, however they did not function except in members of their own line. The Speak & Read was designed to focus on reading comprehension in children of ages 4–8 with a library of over 250 basic words.
The Speak & Read was very minutely redesigned in 1986, under the same name, with the new version representing nothing more substantial than a redesign of the faceplate graphics. In 1988 the Super Speak & Read was released as a major redesign to feature a suitcase-like flip-open appearance. Cartridges were redesigned to be thinner and of a different shape, bearing some resemblance to the cartridges of TI's Touch & Discover line. Additionally, the keyboard was removed completely and a matrix of membrane buttons took its place similarly to the position sensitive "keyboard" of the Touch & Discover consoles. Each cartridge came with a work-booklet that would be laid out in an open position in the center of the Super Speak & Read and as questions were asked of the player he would press the appropriate portion of the work-booklet to depress the membrane button beneath. This was the last member of the Speak & Read line under this name, however the Ready... Set... Read! (sharing a highly similar design layout) and later Magic Reading Desk (featuring a modified Ready... Set... Read! layout) are considered the Speak & Read's spiritual successors. Both Ready... Set... Read! and Magic Reading Desk cartridges are identical in design to the Super Speak & Read's cartridges.
Speak & Math line
The Speak & MathSpeak & Math
The Speak & Math was a popular and revolutionary electronic toy created by Texas Instruments in 1980. Speak & Math was one of a three-part talking educational toy series that also included Speak & Spell and Speak & Read...
(Sold as "Speak and Maths" in some countries) was published in 1980 with a shape identical to both the Speak & Spell and the Speak & Read
Speak & Read
Speak & Read was an electronic learning aid made in 1980, by Texas Instruments. Speak and Read was part of a family of learning toys aimed at different subjects, i.e. "Speak & Math" and "Speak and Spell"....
but with a completely different keyboard layout, different game features, and a different color scheme. Where the American Speak & Spell had been colored red with yellow and orange accents, the American Speak & Math was gray with blue and orange highlights. The Speak & Math was designed to focus on mathematics in children of ages 6–12 with a library of over 100,000 random and preprogrammed problems. It was regarded as the spiritual successor to TI's earlier DataMan series, with the difference mainly relating to the addition of speech synthesizing software and the visual display. The Speak & Math was only released to American and British markets.
In 1982, a compact version of the Speak & Math was developed contemporaneously with the Speak & Spell Compact. This version was only released in French as Les Maths Magique (lit. The Magical Math). A redesigned version was developed in 1985 for British markets under the name of Maths marvel. This was later released in Italian as Dotto Conta-Parla, in French as le Calcul magique (lit. Magical Calculator), and in German as Mathe-Fix.
The Speak & Math was very minutely redesigned in 1986, under the same name, with the new version representing nothing more substantial than a redesign of the faceplate graphics. In 1990 the Super Speak & Math was released as a major redesign similar to the first version of the Super Speak & Spell. As with the Super Speak & Spell, the display screen of the Super Speak & Math was changed to an LCD screen instead of the former VFD screen. The keyboard was also expanded and given more functions. The general structure of the console was also altered similarly to the Super Speak & Spell such that the handle which had come at the top of the screen in prior Speak & Math units was now found on the bottom of the toy and ergonomic
Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study of designing equipment and devices that fit the human body, its movements, and its cognitive abilities.The International Ergonomics Association defines ergonomics as follows:...
features were added to the shape.
Other Solid State Speech products
Texas Instruments' Solid State Speech technology found its way into a number of other titles also related to the Speak & Spell line. Examples include:- Speak & Learn Magic Wand - A work-booklet-based electronic game featuring the use of infra-red barcode readerBarcode readerA barcode reader is an electronic device for reading printed barcodes. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor translating optical impulses into electrical ones...
technology. - Speak & Music - A musical audio gameAudio gameAn audio game is an electronic game played on a device such as a personal computer. It is similar to a video game save that the only feedback device is audible rather than visual....
allowing free-form and memory-based (rhythm memory, eidetic musical memory, etc.) gameplay. - Ready... Set... Read! - Considered the spiritual successor to the Speak & ReadSpeak & ReadSpeak & Read was an electronic learning aid made in 1980, by Texas Instruments. Speak and Read was part of a family of learning toys aimed at different subjects, i.e. "Speak & Math" and "Speak and Spell"....
line. - Magic Reading Desk - Considered the spiritual successor to the Ready... Set... Read! and Speak & ReadSpeak & ReadSpeak & Read was an electronic learning aid made in 1980, by Texas Instruments. Speak and Read was part of a family of learning toys aimed at different subjects, i.e. "Speak & Math" and "Speak and Spell"....
lines. - Little Maestro - A musical audio gameAudio gameAn audio game is an electronic game played on a device such as a personal computer. It is similar to a video game save that the only feedback device is audible rather than visual....
aimed at younger children than the Speak & Music.
Other games
A number of TI's other game lines produced during the period when it was producing Speak & Spell games bore similar logically conjunctiveLogical conjunction
In logic and mathematics, a two-place logical operator and, also known as logical conjunction, results in true if both of its operands are true, otherwise the value of false....
titles and employed similar technology although they did not involve the use of Solid State Speech technology. Such games included:
- Touch & Tell - An educational gameEducational gameEducational games are games that have been designed to teach people about a certain subject, expand concepts, reinforce development, understand an historical event or culture, or assist them in learning a skill as they play...
aimed at children of ages 2 to 5 employing a position-sensitive keyboard.- Teddy Touch & Tell - The next generation of the Touch & Tell game, Teddy Touch & Tell is shaped like a bear and educates children on the topics of the alphabet, numbers, colors, animals, and music.
- Touch & Discover - An educational gameEducational gameEducational games are games that have been designed to teach people about a certain subject, expand concepts, reinforce development, understand an historical event or culture, or assist them in learning a skill as they play...
employing a position-sensitive membrane matrix keyboard. The Touch & Discover is considered the precursor to the Super Speak & Read.- Touch & Discover School Edition - The next generation of the Touch & Discover console, the Touch & Discover School Edition is aimed at a slightly older audience.
- Touch & Talkies - A dedicatedDedicated consoleA dedicated console is a video game console that is dedicated to a built in game or games, and is not equipped for additional games, via cartridges or other media.- History :...
handheld series, there were four versions of Touch & Talkies all aimed at very young players. - Listen & Learn - A series of electronic toys aimed at children of between 6 and 36 months. These toys were ball-shaped and reacted to a player pushing a button in their dimpled surface by producing a sound corresponding to the picture on the button.
External links
- The Texas Instruments Speak & Spell page
- Speak & Spell 1978 Simulator for Windows (in Japanese)
- Web-based Speak & Spell simulator
- Another Web-based Speak & Spell simulator
- The Chip Collection at the Smithsonian - TI Speak & Spell Learning Aid
- Datamath - Speak & Spell information page
- HawkVoice - Windows-based audio encoder, includes LPC capability
- The story of the making of the English Speak & Spell