speak was a Unix utility that used a predefined set of rules to turn a file of English text into phoneme data compatible with a Federal Screw Works (later Votrax) model VS4 "Votrax" Speech Synthesizer.[1][2] It was first included in Unix v3[3] and possibly later ones, with the OS-end support files and help files persisting until v6. As of late 2011, the original source code[4][5] for speak, and portions of speak.m (which is generated from speak.v)[6] were discovered. At least three[7][8][9] versions of the man page are known to still exist.
| Original author(s) | Douglas McIlroy |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | AT&T Bell Laboratories |
| Initial release | February 1973 |
| Operating system | Unix and Unix-like |
| Type | Command |
The main program (speak) was around 4500 bytes,[1] the rule tables (/etc/speak.m) were around 11,000 bytes,[1] and the table viewer (speakm)[10] was around 1900 bytes.[1]
History
editThe speak utility was developed by Douglas McIlroy in the early 1970s at AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was included with the 1st Edition of Unix in 1973. In 1974, McIlroy published a paper describing the workings of this algorithm.[1]
According to the McIlroy paper,[1] "K. Thompson and D. M. Ritchie integrated the device smoothly into the operating system", which is evident from /usr/sys/dev/vs.c "Screw Works Interface via DC-11".
McIlroy Algorithm
editThe McIlroy Algorithm is a large set of rules, sub-rules, and sub-sub-rules, applied to a word to isolate long vowels, silent 'e's, and slowly convert each letter into its "Screw Works" equivalent phoneme code.[11] The intention of the algorithm is to convert any English text into Votrax Phoneme codes, which could be played back/recited by a Federal Screw Works "Votrax" speech synthesizer.
A later (1976), simpler text-to-speech algorithm developed jointly by Votrax and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, known as the "NRL Algorithm", serves a similar purpose.[citation needed]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f M. Douglas McIlroy (March 1974). "Synthetic English speech by rule". The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 14 (S1): S55–S56. Bibcode:1974ASAJ...55R..55M. doi:10.1121/1.1919804.
- ^ McIlroy, M. D. (1974). Synthetic speech by rule (Report). Bell Telephone Laboratories technical report.
- ^ "UNIX® on the Game Boy Advance". www.kernelthread.com.
- ^ "[TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose". Archived from the original on June 20, 2014.
- ^ "[TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose". minnie.tuhs.org. Archived from the original on June 20, 2014.
- ^ "[TUHS] speak.c, or sometimes the bits are under your nose". minnie.tuhs.org. Archived from the original on June 20, 2014.
- ^ "The Unix Tree". minnie.tuhs.org. November 24, 1981. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
- ^ The Unix Tree minnie.tuhs.org
- ^ The Unix Tree minnie.tuhs.org
- ^ The Unix Tree minnie.tuhs.org
- ^ The Unix Tree minnie.tuhs.org