Editing Voder (section)

== Historical Context ==

Before Voder, several significant milestones have marked progress in recreating human speech artificially. 

The earliest attempts towards speech synthesis using mechanical means can be traced back to 1779 when [[Mechanical synthesis#Christian Kratzenstein, 1779: generating vowels with acoustic resonators|Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein]] [http://research.spa.aalto.fi/publications/theses/lemmetty_mst/image48.gif<nowiki>]</nowiki><ref group="Footnotes">Images cannot be directly uploaded to the VT website, so please click on the link to see it.</ref> produced the five vowel sounds /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ using various shaped tubes<ref>Oggerino, J. J. (1980). An evaluation of a talking machine, the HC 120 Phonic Mirror Handivoice.</ref>. A few years later, W. R. von Kempelen of Vienna further advanced this and managed to produce not only vowel sounds but also a number of consonant sounds. His [[Wolfgang von Kempelen's Speaking Machine (1769)|Speaking Machine]], dating back to the late 18th century, utilized bellows and reeds to simulate limited vowel and consonant sounds, underscoring the potential for creating full-fledged artificial speech. 

Charles Wheatstone built upon Kempelen's work with his Speaking Machine in the early 19th century. By incorporating a vibrating reed, [[Wheatstone's "Speaking Machine" (1824)|Wheatstone's machine]] [http://research.spa.aalto.fi/publications/theses/lemmetty_mst/image49.gif<nowiki>] could produce a wider range of sounds compared to previous attempts, resulting in more accurate and recognizable speech sounds</nowiki><ref>Dudley, H., & Tarnoczy, T. H. (1950). The speaking machine of Wolfgang von Kempelen. ''The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', ''22''(2), 151-166.</ref>.

In the late 1920s, the author of Voder had started the development of the much more well-known [[Vocoder Development|Vocoder]]<ref>Dudley, H. (1940). The vocoder—Electrical re-creation of speech. ''Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers'', ''34''(3), 272-278.</ref>, which coded human speech across telephone lines by turning incoming speech into electronic signals and then replicated it on the other end using electric sounds meant to mimic a person’s voice. The Voder, in turn, went one step further: it produced speech without the input of the human voice.