The Voder: 1939, the worlds first electronic voice synthesizer
Overview
A short look at the Voder, the first electronic voice synthesizer, demonstrated by Bell Labs at the 1939 World's Fair. It was operated by trained women using ten finger keys, foot pedals and a knee lever.
On Hacker News
HN cites it as a historic demonstration of early speech synthesis, including discussions about whether the demo was genuine.
Topics
Sources
Video by Brian Roemmele, played through YouTube.
Data and selection notes
HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.
HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.
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