In a brilliant investigative piece the likes of which we have not seen since Woodward and Bernstein, YouTuber Spats Bear has determined that the guy who was the voice behind the Chrysler New Yorker Voice Alert was also the same voice behind Texas Instruments’ Speak and Spell!
Actually, it’s not too far from the truth, because TI was responsible for the voice commands in both units. The Chrysler New Yorker featured a 24 function Electronic Voice Alert (EVA) warning system that would drone out warnings like “YOUR LIGHTS ARE ON.”
The Speak & Spell used the first single-chip voice synthesizer, the TMC0280, later called the TI TMS5100, which utilized a 10th-order linear predictive coding (LPC) model by using pipelined electronic DSP logic. We have absolutely no idea what that means, but we do know that a variant of the single-chip voice synthesizer ended up in the Chrysler New Yorker in the 1980s.
“Unlike earlier computerized voice systems, the EVA voice sounds very human,” said Jack McDowell, Chrysler’s Huntsville Electronics Assembly project manager. Yes, amazingly natural, Jack. One would normally associate such natural tones with a public service announcement on why you should quit smoking Marlboros.
Despite the fact that Siri is kind of a smartass with a decent sense of humor, most iPhone owners get sick of her crap after about a month. That was similarly the case with Chrysler’s EVA, only the early cars featured no way to turn its incessant nagging off. Later cars had a switch in the glovebox that could stifle the car and prevent you from driving into the nearest bridge abutment to silence the voices in your dashboard. (Editor’s note – Because these were K-cars, even if you did pull the ol’ abutment trick you’d only be going fast enough for the car to let out a dispassionate “ouch”.)
And what has that got to do with the price of cotton?
LAME.
Man, I’ve got to track down one of those Mopar EVA boxes at the JY 🙂
. . . Not sure if Mr. Speak and Spell is loud enough to be heard over the exhausts, though . . . .
I loved my old Speak N’ Spell! A Chrysler New Yorker, not so much =D
You should hear them in other languages, it hilarious! Had one come in years ago that spoke French (here in Canada) we must have spent an hour making it talk to laugh at it.
LOL!!!
My father had a brand new 86 New Yorker back in the day with the voice thing … when I drove it the goal was to corner hard enough to slosh the fuel in the tank to hear “Your Fuel is Low!”. ;-0
Remember Eddie Murphy? “Your Batrys’ gone” “Hey man!Someone stole your batry!
I had one of those piles when i was 16 think i gave a hundred bucks for it cant even count how many times I heard that thing scream at me “OIL PRESSURE LOW!!!” Least i knew when to refill the oil that way tho. Many times the thought of finding that box with a large claw hammer crossed my mind!