Intellivoice & The Voice - who came first?

[Nicola]

I love the knowledge of this community!
Anyone knows who copied who? The Intellivoice looks less powerful than The voice for O2, this makes me think that the second one is born due to imitation.
Who had the original idea?

[Steve W]

How about the TI-99/4A Voice Synthesizer? When did that one come out?

I'm not an expert by any stretch, but from my fuzzy memories I remember seeing The Voice come out before the Intellivoice. I'm just wondering if the TI Home Computer's voice module predated both.

[PsychedelicShaman]

There was one website that I was reading yesterday that said the O2 voice came first, but I don't know the validity of that statement.

[DarthKur]

Well, the only one I had was the Intellivoice at the time since I didn't own an O2 back then so I can't remember which was first. I did a bit of searching and found that they both came out in 82 but there's no indication which was first. If I had to bet I'd have to say it was the INTV one.
Here's the links to the two sites with info on them:

http://www.classicgaming.com/o2home/collect/hardware/peripherals.shtml


http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/hardware/voice_tech.html

[DarthKur]

How about the TI-99/4A Voice Synthesizer? When did that one come out?

I'm not an expert by any stretch, but from my fuzzy memories I remember seeing The Voice come out before the Intellivoice. I'm just wondering if the TI Home Computer's voice module predated both.


That's a good point about the TI. The Speech Synth Module was available for the original TI99/4 in 1979 so that one obviously predates both the O2 and INTV ones.

[diskoboy]

I think it was the Odyssey 2's voice by a few months.

Like 2 or 3. It wasn't a very long wait between the two.

[Steve W]

Every time I hear Dr. Stephen Hawking, I think "he sounds just like my TI voice synthesizer!" I'd be willing to bet his synthesis module uses TI chips in it.