From: winston19842005@yahoo.com   
      
   On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 23:48:37 -0600, solarfox wrote:   
      
   ...   
   > 	Still, despite their limitations, the Speech Synthesizer and the VoxBox   
   > *could* be fun to play with if you were willing to dig in and write your   
   > own clever programming for them.  After all, back in 1979-1980, the idea of   
   > a computer that could *talk* to you, and accept voice commands in return,   
   > was pure science-fiction to most people, so you could get some truly   
   > priceless, astonished reactions out of people when they'd come over to your   
   > house to visit and they saw your "funny little Radio Shack computer   
   > thingie" actually *do* those things! :)   
      
   Ok, I learn something new everyday!   
   I always thought the TI-99 was the first with speech (around 79-80, and   
   text to speech around '81-82), but maybe not.   
      
   And you've beaten TI by a few years with speech recognition. The MBX   
   expansion system had both a speech synthesizer (1983), using the same LPC   
   strings as the TI, but also recognition. You "trained" the box to your   
   voice, and the games would respond. Never did too well when you suddenly   
   starting yelling at the game because it misunderstood, then things would   
   go haywire. Very much like these VR (Voice Response) systems you get when   
   you call your local telephone company or such...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)