ceb@csli.stanford.edu (Charles Buckley) (08/14/90)
From: apple!well.sf.ca.us!well!nagle@uunet.uu.net (John Nagle) >Now here's a thought. We all know the announcments which begin >with a special three-tone sequence followed by "The number you have >reached...". How about a voice recognition unit to recognize the new >number and update your autodialer? I remember in 1977 calling the NJ Bell operator from a payphone in south Jersey (in order to find out how many quarters, dimes, and nickels I'd have to go schnorr from the cashier at the diner in which the instrument was located to pay for a three minute call down south), and I asked for the rate to <area code> <office prefix>. Lo and behold, as I listened in, the operator enunciated some command phrase, and the six digits I had given her. A digitized human voice responded with a string of digits which represented the rate (no punctuation, just digits). I asked the operator if the computer was controlled by her voice and she said "yes, it responds to my voice". Given that commercially available voice recognition was first trendy (and of miserable reliability) about 1980, that was truly neat stuff for the epoch. I'm looking for details: Who did it? Why was it dropped? Was it speaker-independent? How reliable? etc. Does anyone who was connected with the project or knows of it read this list? At any rate, the answer would have bearing on Mr. Nagle's question.
ch@dce.ie (Charles Bryant) (08/19/90)
From: apple!well.sf.ca.us!well!nagle@uunet.uu.net (John Nagle) >Now here's a thought. We all know the announcments which begin >with a special three-tone sequence followed by "The number you have >reached...". How about a voice recognition unit to recognize the new >number and update your autodialer? How about the phone company giving the number using DTMF after the voice message? That would be trivial to recognise, unlike a human voice! Charles Bryant