Here are three very well known electronic toys from Texas Instruments. The most well known is the Speak & Spell (or "Speak N Spell"). Texas Instruments followed it up with a number of other speaking toys, two of which share much of the Speak & Spell's visual design. I wanted to have some of these toys for years. Perhaps I paid a bit too much, but now I have the three major versions. It matters little as I'm happy with what I got. Despite not looking all that fancy, they do work. That is a true testament to how well made they were. The jury is still out on how well these compare to Rigs of Rods or The Secret Of Monkey Island in terms of entertainment value. They might do better than you'd think! Later versions of the Speak & Spell exist, one without a display and the other with a liquid crystal display. Add on cartridges with extra words and games were marketed as well. I wonder how popular the add-on cartridges were? Sometimes, it is a bit hard to understand what the units--the Speak N Spell in particular--are trying to get you to do. I have noticed that some words are pronounced very strangely. An example that shows up in this video around 8:56 is the word "sometime", with "forehead" and "bulletin" also sounding rather odd. The Speak and Math is sometimes guilty of this as well--its expression of some problems is confusing if you don't pay careful attention to "think like the machine". Speech synthesis (and recognition!) has come a long way since these devices hit the ...
Thursday, 10 January 2013
Texas Instruments Speaking Toys
Texas Instruments Speaking Toys Tube. Duration : 26.02 Mins.
Here are three very well known electronic toys from Texas Instruments. The most well known is the Speak & Spell (or "Speak N Spell"). Texas Instruments followed it up with a number of other speaking toys, two of which share much of the Speak & Spell's visual design. I wanted to have some of these toys for years. Perhaps I paid a bit too much, but now I have the three major versions. It matters little as I'm happy with what I got. Despite not looking all that fancy, they do work. That is a true testament to how well made they were. The jury is still out on how well these compare to Rigs of Rods or The Secret Of Monkey Island in terms of entertainment value. They might do better than you'd think! Later versions of the Speak & Spell exist, one without a display and the other with a liquid crystal display. Add on cartridges with extra words and games were marketed as well. I wonder how popular the add-on cartridges were? Sometimes, it is a bit hard to understand what the units--the Speak N Spell in particular--are trying to get you to do. I have noticed that some words are pronounced very strangely. An example that shows up in this video around 8:56 is the word "sometime", with "forehead" and "bulletin" also sounding rather odd. The Speak and Math is sometimes guilty of this as well--its expression of some problems is confusing if you don't pay careful attention to "think like the machine". Speech synthesis (and recognition!) has come a long way since these devices hit the ...
Here are three very well known electronic toys from Texas Instruments. The most well known is the Speak & Spell (or "Speak N Spell"). Texas Instruments followed it up with a number of other speaking toys, two of which share much of the Speak & Spell's visual design. I wanted to have some of these toys for years. Perhaps I paid a bit too much, but now I have the three major versions. It matters little as I'm happy with what I got. Despite not looking all that fancy, they do work. That is a true testament to how well made they were. The jury is still out on how well these compare to Rigs of Rods or The Secret Of Monkey Island in terms of entertainment value. They might do better than you'd think! Later versions of the Speak & Spell exist, one without a display and the other with a liquid crystal display. Add on cartridges with extra words and games were marketed as well. I wonder how popular the add-on cartridges were? Sometimes, it is a bit hard to understand what the units--the Speak N Spell in particular--are trying to get you to do. I have noticed that some words are pronounced very strangely. An example that shows up in this video around 8:56 is the word "sometime", with "forehead" and "bulletin" also sounding rather odd. The Speak and Math is sometimes guilty of this as well--its expression of some problems is confusing if you don't pay careful attention to "think like the machine". Speech synthesis (and recognition!) has come a long way since these devices hit the ...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment