The earliest known "talking machine" was developed in 1778 by Wolfgang von Kempelen. Eyewitnesses reported that it could speak several words in a timid, childlike voice. While the talking machine's success appears genuine, Baron von Kempelen's...

Generation of speech by artificial means, usually by computer. Production of sound to simulate human speech is referred to as low-level synthesis. High-level synthesis deals with the conversion of written text or symbols into an abstract representation...

The production of speech sounds by mechanical means, generally from text input. Speech synthesis is now a common technology, used in telephone information systems (in the United States) and in reading machines for the blind. Speech recognition reverses...

n. The process of producing, usually by electronic means, artificial speech which can be understood by humans. A device which does this is a speech synthesizer; the speech produced is synthetic speech. Speech synthesis by rule is a procedure for...

n. An instrument which allows a stretch of recorded speech to be played much more slowly than at normal speed but without distortion, useful for certain analytical...

n. (also synthesized speech) The output produced in speech...

‘Natural’ language that has been imitated in an electro-acoustic...

Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal language text into...