0.2 Demonstrating the speak n spell  (Page 2/4)

To gain support for the development funding we invited our Senior VP in to the lab to try the demonstration probably in late December, 1976 or early January, 1977. Looking back on that first demonstration to senior management I am surprised it didn’t get the project killed on the spot rather than funded. Here is how the demonstration went:

The Senior VP was asked to sit down in front of a keyboard and a CRT monitor. This alone should have been intimidating to the senior VP: In a research laboratory setting with lights blinking, loud fan noises, things spinning and a keyboard and monitor in front of him. In the mid 1970s all of these things were foreign to the everyday environment of such an individual

Richard began the demonstration with a “Level 1” difficulty word set. The voice said “Spell cat”. The SVP, not being adept to sophisticated equipment such as a keyboard, struggled to find the three letters “C”, “A”, “T”. He then needed to be instructed to press the enter key. Once that was done, the voice said “that is correct, now try dog”. A bit more comfortable now, the SVP managed to find the right keys and entered another correct spelling. By this time Richard was getting a bit antsy and suggested that we try a few “Level 4” words. With some reluctance the SVP agreed. The voice then said “spell onomatopoeia”. An attempt with a great deal of struggle was made to enter the correct spelling and the enter key, at which time the voice said “wrong, try again”, followed by a second failed attempt. The voice said again “wrong, try again”, followed by a third poor choice of letters. The voice finally ended the misery by replying “wrong, the correct spelling of onomatopoeia is o, n, o, m, a, t, o, p, o, e, i, a, now try ovoviviparous”. The demonstration ended abruptly at this point. The SVP a lot embarrassed and a bit irritated. We had just added embarrassment to intimidation for him. That was nearly the end of the project. I suspect that the snickering from the four of us didn’t help in his frustration and embarrassment. But fortunately, after a bit of cool down, he was supportive of the concept in spite of our poor judgment in demonstration choices.

To the bod

Once we had a simulator running for the product, my boss at the time suggested that we take it to Dallas to show off to the Board of Directors probably in March or April of 1978. Although we had started the program in Dallas, the product design for the Speak N Spell was moved to Lubbock, Texas, along with the whole Consumer Products Business Unit. While I am at it, I’ll cover the whole spread of the team. In addition to our research and market communications team being in Dallas, the product design and management team was in Lubbock, the IC design team and wafer fabrication facility was in Houston and the first production line was in Midland, Texas. We were spread over the whole state of Texas.

The simulator consisted of three table top racks of equipment each standing about 3 feet high. One rack simulated the micro-controller, the TMC0270. One rack simulated the speech synthesizer, the TMC0280. The final simulator simulated the memory devices, the TMC0350. Each rack used TTL to replicate the schematics of each of the three devices.