Speak & Spell

Listen to the word, type the spelling and let the computer tell you how you did. In 1978, a talking toy seemed pretty amazing.

Turn it on, choose a spelling activity and listen as the little electronic voice gives you a word. Type the letters on the keyboard, press enter and find out whether you got it right.

That may not sound terribly remarkable today. But, in 1978, it was.

Texas Instruments' Speak & Spell was one of the first widely available consumer products to use digital technology to electronically reproduce a human voice. Inside that bright red-and-yellow plastic case was advanced technology for the time - solid-state memory, an LED display and speech generated electronically from computer chips.

Of course, none of that hidden technology mattered much to you when you were trying to figure out exactly what word that robotic little voice was asking you to spell.

Speak & Spell had several different spelling games and later supported additional word cartridges, so you could change what you were practicing. It was supposed to be educational - and it was - but getting a little electronic box to actually talk to you was at least as interesting as the spelling lesson.

And if that distinctive electronic voice sounds familiar for another reason, Speak & Spell eventually made its way into movies, music and popular culture. A Speak & Spell even helped a certain little stranded alien learn how to “phone home.”