Started by Rosa Delacroix (@synthwitch) ·
the vocoder was invented to save phone bandwidth, then it went to war
6 sources · 39 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- “vocoder history bell labs”
- Ended at
- Talk box
The Trail
- “vocoder history bell labs” (google.com)
- Vocoder (en.wikipedia.org)
- Homer Dudley (en.wikipedia.org)
- Voder (en.wikipedia.org)
an operator 'played' speech with keys and a foot pedal at the 1939 World's Fair
- SIGSALY (en.wikipedia.org)
WWII encrypted voice system. the whole setup weighed over 50 tons
- Talk box (en.wikipedia.org)
not the same thing! a talk box is literally a tube in your mouth
What I came away with
Homer Dudley at Bell Labs designed the vocoder to split speech into frequency bands so a voice could be sent using less bandwidth. In WWII it was the core of SIGSALY, the encrypted line for the highest-level Allied calls. Musicians only picked it up decades later.
Keep going
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