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| 1988-05-30 finding_a_voice.pdf |
Stephen Hawking: How He Speaks and Spells | EE Times
When he was diagnosed, Hawking had not even finished his doctorate in physics. He was given two years to live. However, with the help of technology from the self-proclaimed "rocket scientist" Walt Waltosz, who personally wrote the software that allowed him to get his life back, Hawking was able not only to speak to others but also to write the book A Brief History of Time, which broke all sales records by staying on the British Sunday Times bestseller list for 237 weeks (more than four-and-a-half years). He is still using the same software to serve as director of research at the University of Cambridge Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.
Waltosz's motivation was not to help Hawking, but to give a voice to his mother-in-law, who was similarly stricken by Lou Gehrig's disease in the 1980s.
Speech Synthesizers
From “A Brief History of Time”, page 205
“The software, called Equalizer, was donated by Walt Waltosz of Words Plus Inc., in Lancaster, California. My speech synthesizer was donated by Speech Plus, of Sunnyvale, California.”
Stephen Hawking nixes Intel voice upgrade plan • The Register
Stephen Hawking scuppered an Intel plan to upgrade his voice, sending researchers at the chip giant into a desperate effort to emulate a defunct speech-synthesis chip.Stephen Hawking chooses a new voice
Celebrated Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has selected and is using NeoSpeech's Text-to-Speech engine, VoiceText, as his new voice. VoiceText is integrated into Dr. Hawking's communicator, E Z Keys, enabling him to clearly communicate with the outside world.Terminator robots could end human life predicts Professor Stephen Hawking - Mirror Online
'As a scientist and lecturer, it is imperative that Professor Hawking presents his findings in a clear and concise manner,' said Tom Pelly, Dr. Hawking's technical assistant. 'Professor Hawking was very impressed by NeoSpeech's speech synthesiser, as it was by far the most natural-sounding and realistic of all of the off-the-shelf software voices that he has heard. This technology can help ensure that his vocals match his research in terms of credibility and believability.'
Prof. Hawking’s motor neurone disease means he can only communicate via a small sensor controlled by a cheek muscle but an upgrade means he can now type twice as fast.
He uses the sensor to type characters onto a keyboard and then what he types is converted into his famous synthesised American voice.
Intel has been providing the technology to allow him to speak for 20 years and now London-based SwiftKey - which develops popular predictive keyboard apps - have updated his software.
The Swiftkey involvement means that Prof. Hawking now only needs to type just 15-20% of the characters in order to string together full sentences. This has helped to double his speech rate.
He said: “I was able to speak with a speech synthesiser, though it gave me an American accent. I have kept that voice, because it’s now my trademark.
“Before I lost my voice, it was slurred, so only those close to me could understand, but with the computer voice, I found I could give popular lectures.
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