The Speak & Spell line is a series of electronic hand-heldTexas Instruments Handheld Games Console Passion Retro Games. Retrieved 18 December 2008.Speak & Spell. Computer History Museum. Retrieved 18 December 2008.Handheld archive search results [S]. Handheld Remakes. Retrieved 18 December 2008. child computers by Texas Instruments that consisted of a TMC0280 linear predictive coding speech synthesizer, a keyboard, and a receptor slot to receive one of a collection of ROM game"Module Information". Speak & Spell Manual. Texas Instruments. 1980. library modules. The first Speak & Spell was introduced at the summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1978, making it one of the earliest handheld electronic devices with a visual display to use interchangeable game cartridges.Texas Instruments Collection – Learning Aid. Smithsonian NMAH. Retrieved 18 December 2008. The company Basic Fun brought back a variant of the second-gen classic Speak & Spell in 2019 with a newly recorded voice and other minor changes.
The Speak & Spell was named an IEEE Milestone in 2009.
Background The Speak & Spell was created by a small team of engineers, led by Paul Breedlove, with Texas Instruments (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. Additional purchased cartridges (called expansion modules) could be inserted through 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).
The Speak & Spell console The original Speak & Spell was the first of a three-part talking educational toy series that also included Speak & Read 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, the United Kingdom,Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (English Voice Type 1). Datamath Calculator Museum. 14 July 2005. and Japan.Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (Japan). Datamath Calculator Museum. 1 September 2005 The voice in the toy was provided by Mitch Carr, a radio anchor at KRLD.
The toy was originally advertised as a tool for helping children ages 7 and up to learn to spell and pronounce over 200 commonly misspelled words. It shipped without a cartridge as the configuration called the 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). In 1989 the Super Speak & Spell was released to replace the original vacuum fluorescent display (VFD) with a liquid crystal display (LCD).
Between 1989 and 1992, the Super Speak & Spell saw three redesigns as well. The 1992 Super Speak & Spell marked the last release of the series.
Regional variations with different speech libraries and different games were released in at least nine countries with seven language variations. Because the linguistic aspect of the games played on the Speak & Spell is 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.Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speech Products. Datamath Calculator Museum. 13 January 2001. 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.Woerner, Joerg.Additional Pictures . Datamath Calculator Museum. 23 December 2007.
In 1980, the original Speak & Spell was redesigned to give it a membrane keyboard in place of raised buttons.Gregory, Chris and Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (Type 2). Datamath Calculator Museum. 25 January 2002. 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 was available to the 1980 release. Outside of the United States, the 1980 release was marketed in the United Kingdom under the same name,Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (English Voice Type 2). Datamath Calculator Museum. 13 July 2005. in German as the BuddyWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Buddy. Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. (employing an umlaut in place of the Speak & Spell's apostrophe), and in French as La Dictée MagiqueWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments La Dictée Magique Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. ("The Magical Dictation").
In 1982, the Speak & Spell Compact was released at about half the size of the Speak & Spell and lacking the VFD screen.Bohlig, Dirk and Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell Compact. Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. The Speak & Spell Compact was a dedicated console and only one other version, the Speak & Write,Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Write. Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. was released for English markets.
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 ParlanteWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Grillo Parlante. Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. ("The Talking Cricket" as the character of the book for children The Adventures of Pinocchio), and then later in the United StatesWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (Type 3). Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. and the United KingdomWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (English Voice Type 3). Datamath Calculator Museum. 3 December 2007. as the Speak & Spell, and in France as the Dictée MagiqueWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments La Dictée Magique (Type 2). Datamath Calculator Museum. 28 October 2008. again.
In 1989, the Super Speak & Spell was released 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.Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Super Speak & Spell. Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. 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. 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.Woerner, Joerg. Additional Pictures . Datamath Calculator Museum. 23 December 2007.
In 1990, the Super Speak & Spell was redesigned to be similar to its prior Speak & Spell form. This version re-adopted the handle-on-top look of the previous models and resumed the use of the original cartridges.Woerner, Joerg. Additional Pictures . Datamath Calculator Museum. 23 December 2007. 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 diacritics. It was marketed first in Spanish as El Loro ParlanchínWoerner, Joerg. El Loro Parlanchín. Datamath Calculator Museum. 6 May 2007. (The Chatty Parrot), and then later in the United StatesWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Super Speak & Spell (91). Datamath Calculator Museum. 5 December 2001. as the Super Speak & Spell, in French as La Super Dictée Magique,Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments La Super Dictée Magique. Datamath Calculator Museum. 16 March 2004 and in Italian as Grillo Parlante PiùWoerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments Grillo Parlante Più. Datamath Calculator Museum. 6 May 2007. ("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 Woerner, Joerg. Texas Instruments El Loro Profesor. Datamath Calculator Museum. 25 September 2002. (Professor Parrot).
2019 Speak & Spell In 2019, Basic Fun acquired rights to manufacture the Speak & Spell. The updated version introduced a number of changes. Primary among these is the replacement of the original microprocessor and classic synthesized voice chip (TMS1000 and TMC0280 respectively) with recorded dialog that is processed to sound as if it is synthesized. It also offers on-device instructions that were not available on previous versions. The 2019 model Speak & Spell also replaces the VFD screen with a segmented LCD screen. The use of removable cartridges has also been eliminated.
Electronics The Speak & Spell used the first single-chip voice synthesizer, the TMC0280, later known as the TI TMS5100, which utilized a 10th-order linear predictive coding (LPC) model by using pipelined electronic DSP logic.History Channel, Modern Marvels: "70s Tech", 2007, aired 6:00–7:00pm MST A variant of this chip with a very similar voice was eventually used 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 use. 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. Originally all of the recording and processing was completed in Dallas. By 1982 when the British, French, Italian and German versions were being developed, the original voices were recorded in the TI facility near Nice in France and these full bit rate digital recordings were sent to Dallas for processing using a minicomputer. Some weeks later the processed data was returned and required significant hand editing to fix the voicing errors which had occurred during the process. The data rate was so radically cut that all of the words needed some editing. In some cases, this was fairly simple, but some words were unintelligible and required days of work and others had to be completely scrapped. 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) that was only capable of displaying 8 text characters at a time. The later Super Speak & Spell model had a slimmer case and an LCD screen which could display 16 characters.