Hi, Some years back, I was asking if anyone had information about the speech synthesizer developed for the Altair 8080 by Wirt Atmar of AICS (in New Mexico). No "hits".
Most places on the web claimed the Computalker was first, given the date as 1976 or 1977. (Earlier speech synthesizes existed, but they were external boxes that one interfaced to, or were standalone (often with a large/weird keyboard).) Today, I stumbled over a fairly bad OCR of Byte magazine from August, 1976 at https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1976-08/1976_08_BYTE_00-12_Speech_Synthesis_djvu.txt It has two articles about speech synthesizers for S-100 bus systems. The first is by the Computalker people, who say: At the time this article goes to press, a synthesizer module incorporating several detail refinements and im- provements over the circuits of this article is being de- veloped by the author and associates. and A detailed user's guide will be supplied with the Computalker module Note the future tense! The second is by Wirt Atmar, whose product *was already shipping*. Near the end of his Byte article, Wirt lists currently available products: At the present time, two speech synthesizers are both commercially available and affordable by the hobbyist. One is the Votrax produced by: Vocal Interface Division Federal Screw Works 500 Stephenson Dr Troy Ml 48084 Price, approximately $2,000 Interfacing: Parallel or Serial (RS-232) The second is the Model 1000 manufactured by: Ai Cybernetic Systems PO Box 4691 University Park NM 88003 Price, $425 Wirt had told me (twenty years ago or so) that he thought his was the first for microcomputers (e.g., a user installed card, not an external box). Now, I'm sure ... but it was realllly close! Wirt demonstrated his product at the earlier MITS World Altair Computer Conven- tion, where it won first prize. He advertised it poorly/infrequently, since it was mostly a side business. And, that shows, since history doesn't remember it. Stan
