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 while the little electronic voice gives you a word. Type the letters, press enter, and find out whether you got it right. That doesn't sound very remarkable now. In 1978, it was.

Texas Instruments' Speak & Spell was one of the earliest mass-market products to use electronic speech synthesis. Inside the bright red-and-yellow case was some pretty advanced technology for the time, including solid-state memory, an LED display, and speech generated by computer chips.

Speak & Spell included several spelling activities, and later versions could use additional word cartridges. 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.

The Speak & Spell was a lot of fun, and educational, especially for younger kids just learning to spell. Keep in mind that this isn’t a text to speech device where you can type in anything and it pronounces it (or my older brother would have likely gotten our Speak & Spell banned from the house). It is an educational toy - it speaks a word, then you have to correctly spell that word by typing it on the keyboard.

And if that electronic voice sounds familiar for another reason, Speak & Spell eventually showed up in movies, music, and popular culture. A Speak & Spell even helped a certain stranded alien figure out how to "phone home".