0.7 Product introduction  (Page 3/3)

The biggest surprise of the three was the product acceptance in education. We had hoped it would happen but weren't certain of it. Prior to the Little Professor, electronic calculators were not allowed into the classroom. They were seen as cheating - students should be able to solve math problems without the aid of a calculator. But both the Little Professor and the Speak N Spell were taking a different approach, rather than being a way to avoid learning how to solve math problems or learning how to spell, they were designed to be a learning aid to the student. They were also designed to allow the learning process to be fun. As an aside, I am continually appalled at the inability for a sales person to give proper change without the aid of the cash register acting as a four function calculator.

Introduction at the consumer electronic show in chicago

There were a couple of exhibitions that we needed to show the Speak N Spell at in order to determine the production quantities for the Christmas season in 1978. The two best shows were the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) and the Toy Fair. Unfortunately the winter CES, held in Los Vegas in January and the Toy Fair, held in NYC in February were too early for us to show the Speak N Spell. So we delayed its introduction until the Summer CES held in Chicago in June.

This decision became a bit of an issue for our research staff, particularly Richard Wiggins. The technical conference, that the researchers who were involved in the development, attended was the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). It was held each spring prior to the CES in Chicago by a month or so. What that meant was that our speech research team, under the direction of George Doddington, could not give a paper on the technical breakthrough. Nor, could they even discuss it with colleagues at the conference. They were sworn to silence. All they could do was to smile a lot. They would have to wait another year before they could talk openly at ICASSP about the amazing thing they had achieved. And, since the CES was not a technical conference, but a marketing exhibit, they weren't allowed to attend and bask in the limelight.

I was surprised when I learned that I would not be able to attend the CES, as I was a technologist and not a marketing person. But I stood firmly in that the demonstration Speak N Spells at the show would only run on batteries and not have power adapters. My reasoning was simple: I did not want anyone to think that the speech was being "piped" in through the power cord. There was to be no other explanation than the speech synthesizer was the source of the speech. What this meant was a technologist, who knew the design of the Speak N Spell, would need to attend to change the batteries and fix any issues that might occur at the show. As I fit that description perfectly, I pulled together some spare parts, a soldering iron, some tools and flew to Chicago to attend the CES.

Actually there was another reason for not wanting the demonstration Speak N Spells at CES to run on batteries. It had to do with a couple of other business opportunities that were being developed in parallel with the Speak N Spell. As I noted in Chapter 2, the Speak N Spell was a high risk program. Therefore senior management asked for quarterly progress reviews. So once a quarter, I was scheduled to present the progress and finances to a committee, of which I don't remember the name, but it included the President of the company, Fred Bucy. There were two other development programs in the Calculator Division which were also on the agenda. They were the Home Computer and CB Radio. I remember that I was always last to present and therefore had to sit through both of the other presentations. Both programs were behind schedule and spending far more money than forecast at the previous review. I might add that both of those program managers were well respected high level managers in the division - I was the "kid". After hearing both of the other program managers spend their presentations explaining why they have over spent their forecasts and had slipped their schedule (with appropriate encouragement and suggestions from our senior management) I would get up to present the Speak N Spell status. But I felt I was losing my credibility with senior management as I presented the status. Each time I would explain how we had not only met the goals presented last time, but were actually a bit ahead of schedule. I also had to show that we had under spent our previous forecast. It was a bit embarrassing but I presented it boldly and proudly. Now, I have told this story to bring us up to the CES, where both of the other two programs were still struggling, and the Speak N Spell was being introduced and preparing to be ramped into production. So the second reason for only using batteries for the Speak N Spell demonstration is that the other conclusion the audience would have to make, if they didn't believe we had created synthetic speech was that we had succeeded in the CB Radio program to the extent we were piping the voice in to the Speak N Spell with the CB Radio.

There are other stories I could tell about the introduction but will only say that my experience being with marketing and sales people for that week revealed a new world to me. It cemented my choice to remain a technologist for the rest of my career. But in spite of that the introduction was successful, including one result of the Speak N Spell being shown on the TODAY show.

Now, all we had to do was to qualify the design, ramp it into production and ship it to our retailers. As a quick look into the next chapter, I will note that it isn't easy taking a brand new concept into production and also that Christmas is an event on a schedule that does not slip.