Newsgroups: comp.speech
Path: lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!warwick!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!apple.com!gallant.apple.com!mac254.kip.apple.com!user
From: minow@apple.com (Martin Minow)
Subject: Re: VOTRAX
Sender: news@gallant.apple.com
Message-ID: <minow-010494224450@mac254.kip.apple.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 1994 06:51:29 GMT
References: <2n907j$m6a@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>
Organization: Macintosh Developer Services
Followup-To: comp.speech
Lines: 38

In article <2n907j$m6a@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>, mmcohen@dewi.ucsc.edu
(Dr. Michael M. Cohen) wrote:
> 
> Wonder if anyone can help out completing a reference...
> What was/is  the address (city & state at least)
> of VOTRAX, A division of Federal Screw Works
> (VOTRAX was 1st inexpensive synthesis box).
> 	TIA, MMCohen

This may be out of date, but in the late 1970's, the address was
    Vocal Interface Division
    Federal Screw Works
    500 Stephenson Highway
    Troy, Michigan 48084

I have manuals (and programmed) the Votrax ML-1 -- and have software
lying around gathering dust on a disk somewhere, too.

While you might thing that "Federal Screw Works" is redundant, the 
reality is, as I recall, a more interesting story. Federal Screw
Works made fasteners for the automobile industry. One of their
employees had a relative (child?) with a speech disability. He
cobbled a workable phoneme synthesizer together in his garage.

Since he had signed a patent agreement, Federal Screw Works owned
the invention and created a small industry to exploit it.

They made a number of more-or-less analog synthesizers, ranging from
the toster-oven sized ML1 to a single-chip. The software of choice
was the NRL rule set (available in the original Snobol, in Basic-Plus
as published in a Decus conferee proceeding, and in C). Speech was
quite understandable.

Hope this fills you in on some details. Unfortunately, I don't have
one to play with any more.

Martin Minow
minow@apple.com
