Meet Siri’s Great-Grandfather, the Voder

Voder demonstration
The Voder being demonstrated at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. From the Bell Telephone Magazine, no known copyright restrictions.

Mrs Helen Harper, of Jamaica, New York, had an unusual ability — she could play the human voice with her fingers.

It was 1939, and the world’s first electronic speech synthesiser had just been invented at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.  The Voder, as it was named, Read the rest