Klatt’s `History of speech synthesis’ Archive of audio clips.

Sound files and descriptions from Dennis H. Klatt (1987),
“Review of text-to-speech conversion for English”
J. Acous. Soc. Amer. 82, 737-793

 

Part D: Fully automatic text-to-speech conversion

24. The first full text-to-speech system, done in Japan by Noriko Umeda et al., 1968.

25. The first Bell Laboratories text-to-speech system, by Cecil Coker, Noriko Umeda, and Cathrine Browman, 1973.

26. The Haskins Laboratories text-to-speech system, 1973.

27. The Kurzweil reading machine for the blind, Raymond Kurzweil, 1976.

28. The inexpensive Votrax Type-n-Talk system, by Richard Gagnon, 1978.

29. The Echo low-cost diphone concatenation system, about 1982.

30. The MIT MITalk system, by Jonathan Allen, Sheri Hunnicutt, and Dennis Klatt, 1979.

31. The multi-language Infovox system, by Rolf Carlson, Bjorn Granström and Sheri Hunnicut, 1982.

32. The Speech Plus Inc. ``Prose-2000'' commercial system, 1982.

33. The Klattalk system, by Dennis Klatt of MIT, which formed the basis for Digital Equipment Corporation's DECtalk commercial system, 1983.

34. The ATT Bell Laboratories text-to-speech system, 1985.

35. Several of the DECtalk voices. (a) `Perfect Paul'

Several of the DECtalk voices. (b) `Beautiful Betty'

Several of the DECtalk voices. (c) `Huge Harry'

Several of the DECtalk voices. (d) `Kit the Kid'

Several of the DECtalk voices. (e) `Whispering Wendy '

36. DECtalk speaking at about 300 words/minute.