While watching the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie,
at some point when one of the computer voices was speaking, a memory of the "This Is DigiTalker" voice suddenly came to mind. Back in the
mid-1980s while working at Westinghouse in Annapolis, Maryland, a couple of the engineers brought a DigiTalker prototype experimentation
board into the super-classified area where I worked. According to National Semiconductor's datasheet, it was introduced sometime around 1980.
The programmable digital voice IC was a big deal in that unlike other devices that had a fixed set of phrases (see
my frightening Clarance the Stack-A-Round Clown),
DigiTalker had a large list and could,
in later versions, potentially speak almost anything. It was a big deal at the time. DigiTalker went on to become "The Voice of the Elevator Industry."
National Semiconductor' MM54104 DIGITALKER
DIGITALKER Video
Datasheet for National Semiconductor's DT1050 DIGITALKER Vocabulary Kit
