![]() ![]() It was a race because, you know, when we started, we knew he was in his 70s. That's the one I want.ĬHANG: And that final version, Hawking got it just this year - right? - in January just a couple of months before he died.ĭORSEY: Yes. And he said, yes, that is identical to my voice. ![]() After 3 1/2 years, we finally presented it to him at the end of January of this year. But basically the solution you guys came up with is you got some software to mimic the old 1986 hardware and you finally came up with this voice.ĬOMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE #3: So let me finish by reflecting on the state of the universe.ĬHANG: Ok, so when Hawking heard that, was he like, yeah, this is it?ĭORSEY: Yes. And so we looked at, you know, the acoustical differences and we talked about, you know, reverse engineering the 1996 version to bring it back to the 1986 version, which was the first approach we looked at.ĬHANG: OK, so this gets super technical and I'm totally simplifying here. And, you know, he wasn't interested in the voice being better in any way. So even though you could argue that acoustically it is better, it's obviously different. What did Hawking say back then when he first heard the 1996 version?ĭORSEY: Right. Let's hear his 1986 voice and the '96 voice side by side.ĬOMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE #1: So let me finish by reflecting on the state of the universe.ĬHANG: And this is a sample of the '96 software trying to upgrade that.ĬOMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE #2: So let me finish by reflecting on the state of the universe.ĬHANG: That sounds cleaner to me. And from what I understand, a tech company had already pitched using this software back in 1996 to help Hawking preserve his voice. And your first lead was some software from 1996 that you guys unearthed. You know, bored, irritated but also be extremely intelligible.ĬHANG: So you and a team go on this quest to save Stephen Hawking's voice. You know, he wanted a voice that people could listen to for an hour for a lecture and not get.ĭORSEY. So when you first got a call in 2014 about preserving Hawking's voice, the same 1986 version which you helped develop, what went through your mind?ĭORSEY: The first thing that went through my mind was I was just kind of shocked that he was still using the same original hardware and that, you know, the same voice because, of course, technology had moved on quite a bit with products like Siri or Alexa.ĬHANG: What was it specifically about the 1986 voice that he seemed so attached to?ĭORSEY: You know, one was the kind of intonation that it had. And one of the engineers who had to figure out how to save it was Eric Dorsey.ĮRIC DORSEY: Hi, Ailsa. After nearly 30 years, the 1986 hardware that powered Stephen Hawking's voice was degrading. But the truth is, the late scientist grew quite attached to it - so attached that he got a group of tech whizzes to take on the painstaking task of rescuing his voice. ![]() Hawking used to joke about getting stuck with an American accent. That machine voice became Hawking's voice after a debilitating neurological disease took away his own ability to talk. And now a story about an instantly recognizable voice.ĬHANG: That, of course, is physicist Stephen Hawking, who died earlier this month.
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