
The woman who saved Stephen Hawking's voice and gave the tech to those in need - vivekd
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-20-2018-1.4583785/meet-the-woman-who-saved-stephen-hawking-s-voice-and-then-gave-the-technology-away-to-those-in-need-1.4583922
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ashleyn
I recall reading somewhere that Stephen Hawking's original voice was a
DECtalk, specifically a voice included with it called "Paul". I'm guessing
that, in order to keep this voice, someone had to dump the samples from a
DECtalk or even call up HP to see if they could buy the masters. The article
says he copyrighted the voice, so I'm willing to bet it was more the latter.

It's interesting to note that until 2001, the "Paul" voice was used by NOAA to
broadcast weather alerts to automatic weather radios. It's also interesting to
note that the voice itself was a series of samples recorded by Dennis Klatt, a
researcher who dedicated his career to helping the disabled speak again and
passed away shortly after the DECtalk was released. That Hawking was able to
adopt it as his own, is a rather sweet tale with a cyberpunk twist.

You can compare the DECtalk "Paul" voice with Klatt's own voice here:
[http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt.html](http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt.html)

~~~
tmottabr
the master from his voice never belonged to HP, it is owned by Nuance after
multiple acquisition. The original owner was Speech Plus, who made the
CallText 5010 synth he used until this year.

They indeed were looking for the masters [1].

When they found it they made a replacement for the voice synth on software
running in a raspberry pi. They had just replaced the the old voice synth back
in Jan. [2]

Additionally, Dennis Klatt was the inventor of DECTalk, the three original
voices were his own for the male voice, his wife voice for the female voice
and his daughter voice for a child voice, they were named Perfect Paul, that
was the default voice, Beautiful Betty and Kit the Kid.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-gave-stephen-hawking-
voi...](https://www.wired.com/2015/01/intel-gave-stephen-hawking-voice/)

[2] [http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-
computer.html](http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-computer.html)

~~~
therein
> the three original voices were his own for the male voice, his wife voice
> for the female voice and his daughter voice for a child voice, they were
> named Perfect Paul, that was the default voice, Beautiful Betty and Kit the
> Kid.

Don't forget the whispering Wendy. Who was that?

------
CWuestefeld
A little OT, but I think squarely in HN territory:

Years ago, a friend of mine's mother-in-law lost her voice due to cancer. As
an engineer, he built her a tool from a toy Casio keyboard and some samples,
allowing her to talk using this portable toy.

After that experience, he talked about wanting to create a service by with
which people could archive their voices, so that in case of future need they
could be loaded as samples for such a device. He'd give them scripts to read
and record, from which he'd parse the phoneme samples, and then storing them
in a repository that they could later retrieve if necessary.

Today there's probably a need for a lot more security than he'd talked about
at the time, but it seems like something that's eminently do-able today. It
could be a very cheap and low-cost endeavor, but useful as a sort of insurance
because it carries a really high value in the unusual cases where it's needed.

~~~
dzuc
This exact thing does exist:
[https://www.vocalid.co/legacy](https://www.vocalid.co/legacy)

I believe there's also another service I'm forgetting the name of right now.

~~~
maneesh
Lyrebird

~~~
toomuchtodo
I experimented with Lyrebird the other night, recording the maximum 300
sentences for their learning algorithm, and I wasn’t impressed with the
output. With that said, big fan of the idea and I hope they can improve the
output over time.

------
melling
“Initially, Nachman and her team were asked to improve the speed at which he
could communicate”

Hawking could only communicate at about 10 words a minute. There has been some
work to improve this technology with predictive type, for example.

[https://iq.intel.com/behind-scenes-intel-keeps-stephen-
hawki...](https://iq.intel.com/behind-scenes-intel-keeps-stephen-hawking-
talking/)

Was curious if the technology has improved much? Eye tracking, gesturing, etc

~~~
delecti
I didn't actually have a great sense for how fast a normal person might talk.
In case anyone else is curious, it turns out that normal conversation averages
about 110-150 words per minute. That definitely puts into perspective how
sluggish 10 wpm is.

[https://www.quora.com/Speeches-For-the-average-person-
speaki...](https://www.quora.com/Speeches-For-the-average-person-speaking-at-
a-normal-pace-what-is-the-typical-number-of-words-they-can-say-in-one-minute)

------
jasonmaydie
Someone clarify because I'm confused. I thought there were newer alternatives
with better hardware but Hawkings wanted to keep his old system. How does
giving way his system help when there are better implementations out there?

~~~
knight17
Hawkins wanted to keep the familiar voice he has been using. He did not want
it replaced with 'better' voices because he came to identify strongly with the
voice.

They (Intel?) replaced the hardware and software with a better system, called
Assistive Context-Aware Toolkit (ACAT). It allowed him to use computer easily
(compared to the old system) [0]:

 _The new Intel user interface operates like an engine. A sensor mounted on
Hawking 's cheek is detected by an infrared switch attached to his glasses,
helping Hawking select a character on his computer. A customized version of
the popular SwiftKey app has greatly improved the system's ability to predict
his next characters, words and actions so he only has to type the first few
characters of a word. That information is relayed to his speech synthesizer.

To search the Web, for example, Hawking previously had to take lengthy routes:
Exit from a communication window, navigate a mouse to run the browser,
navigate the mouse again to the search bar, and finally type the search text.
The new system automates all of these steps seamlessly and quickly._

[0] : [https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/12/02/intel-
hawking...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/12/02/intel-hawking-
tool/18822665/)

