Holy shit, listen to this: Voder-1939, the worlds first electronic voice synthes - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2019, 09:21:01 pm
content: The Voder: 1939, the worlds first electronic voice synthesizer:

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2019, 09:49:34 pm
content: It’s not called the “Voder 1939”, it’s theVoder, which happened to bemadein 1939.I wanna say this was discussed within some other thread on here not terribly long ago. (Edit: I remember now, it’s in the discussion of The 8-Bit Guy’s crappy video on speech synthesis.)

author: edy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 25, 2019, 07:19:34 pm
content: That's pretty cool. I wonder if they released any schematics or if it is possible to buy or build a kit using some modern chips to do the same thing? I'd love to put something together but instead of having to learn how to operate the keys precisely for 1 year of constant practice, feed it some text file and run it via Arduino.

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 03:03:01 am
content: I'd still build the whole thing outta tubes.Should just be plain audio tubes so cheap chinese ones should work just fine. But yeah, an alternative method of input such as computer control would be necessary for us noobs to use it.Also, is this the origin of the modern synthesizer instrument the "vocoder"?

author: BrianHG
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 04:11:35 am
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on March 26, 2019, 03:03:01 amWell, it was done with a few transistors, however, you can convert it to tubes as it is only 3 or 4 oscillators and a noise generator.See here:https://beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/belllabs_kits_ss.htmlFull description and schematic in here:https://beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/pdf/speechsynthesis.pdf

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 09:44:17 am
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on March 26, 2019, 03:03:01 amNot precisely. The vocoder instrument is derived from the vocoder from telephony, of which the Voder was a tech demo of one part of the system. Read the wiki article about the vocoder, and google SIGSALY.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 09:45:15 am
content: Quote from: BrianHG on March 26, 2019, 04:11:35 amWell the 1939 Voder certainly wasn’t made with transistors, given that they hadn’t yet been invented in 1939...

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 10:32:29 am
content: Note that they first say it using human voice (thus setting in your mind the expectation for what the Vocoder sounds will try to speak), then do some noises with the Vocoder, noises resembling the same words as the ones pronounced before in human voice. It's your own brain what makes it feels like speech. Without hearing it in human voice first, you wont understand much (if at all) from what the Vocoder voice is trying to say. Except maybe for the cow "mooo", which was pretty accurate.Even so, given the technology of those times, the results were impressive.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 11:33:50 am
content: As a poor Theremin player myself, I can appreciate how blindingly hard that thing must've been to operate. Holey moley!Tim

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2019, 12:26:49 pm
content: Kinda reminds me of HAL9000.

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 27, 2019, 03:42:58 am
content: The original 1939 voder filmThis "thing" was actually invented in early 1700, all mechanical but yet synthetic speach.

author: MichaelWeaser
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 25, 2020, 03:04:36 am
content: Quote from: RoGeorge on March 26, 2019, 10:32:29 amThere is new information about how the ladies where trained to play it. After training was basically over, after they have learned what keys made what sounds and what order you had to press the keys to get a certain sound , they practiced a lot right before the demonstration of it at the world's fair. Basically the way the 1 year training worked is the first 6 months was learning what keys made what sounds and putting the sounds together to make a word and saying basic sentences, Then the Last 6 months was just practice. The way the practice went is the ladies could only talk to each other through the Voder. During practice no human could speak at all. So obviously there was no human during practice saying what the voder was going to say right before it was played on the Voder. So I do believe that the Voder was intelligible enough to not need a human saying what was going to be played on the voder.Another thing , Yes you can easily make your own Voder using a bank of 10 audio filters and here is a video of a somewhat working clone :