Brendan Howell presents: Donald Sherman orders a pizza using a talking computer Dec 4, 1974

On view 1 – 30 November 2015

Every year, the researchers, students, and technology users who make up the community of the Michigan State University Artificial Language Laboratory celebrate the anniversary of the first use of a speech prosthesis in history: the use by a man with a communication disorder to order a pizza over the telephone using a voice synthesizer. This high-tech sociolinguistic experiment was conducted at the Lab on the evening of December 4, 1974. Donald Sherman, who has Moebius Syndrome and had never ordered a pizza over the phone before, used a system designed by John Eulenberg and J. J. Jackson incorporating a Votrax voice synthesizer, a product of the Federal Screw Works Co. of Troy, Michigan. The inventor of the Votrax voice synthesizer was Richard Gagnon from Birmingham, MI.