speak (Unix)
speak was a Unix utility that used a predefined set of rules to turn a file of english text into phoneme data compatible with a Federal Screw Works (later Votrax) model VS4 Speech Synthesizer. It was included in Unix versions 1 and 2, with support and help files persisting until version 5. Neither the original binaries nor the source code for speak have been found yet.
History
The speak utility was developed by Douglas McIlroy in the early 1970s at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was was included with the 1st Edition of Unix in 1973. In 1974, Douglas McIlroy published a paper describing the workings of this algorithm. [1] It is quite likely that this algorithm, later referred to as the "Mcilroy Algorithm", formed the basis or at least inspiration for a later text-to-speech algorithm developed jointly by Votrax and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
- ^ M. Douglas McIlroy (1974). "Synthetic English speech by rule". Computing Science Technical Report, Bell Laboratories. 14.
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