For Sale: Rare 1980's electronic talking language tutor translator, complete in box and in mint or near mint shape.
Carefully tested and working great. Includes German module, German word phrase study guide, earphone, original AC adpater, protective case, some misc. paperwork, and box. Marked "Assembled in USA". Clean battery compartment.
Here is video taken to demo working condition: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PRo-J0rVDG0Y6rNp6s88UUTse4pxg2yt
Tons more info and audio clips here: http://www.datamath.org/Speech/LanguageTutor.htm
Shortly after the invention of the synthesizer technology to reproduce human speech with tuned voices stored in ROMs (Read Only Memories - Integrated Circuits), the Language Translator was introduced. The product was later renamed to Language Tutor and both products were marketed in parallel. With the Language Teacher a cheaper version without the speaker was introduced the same time.
Dismantling this Language Tutor manufactured in November 1979 by Texas instruments in its Midland, TX facility reveals a design centered around a TMC0280 Voice Synthesis Processors (VSP) - also known as TMS5110 - and a TMS0275 single-chip microcontroller.
We assume that the microcontroller is a member of the TMS1270 family, optimized for vacuum fluorescent displays (VFD).
An easy accessible "Solid State Speech™ Module" contains the software to translate from e.g. English, French and Spanish to spoken German. Other modules to translate to spoken English, French or Spanish were available. Texas Instruments announced optional modules in Russian, Chinese and Japanese for $50, each. We don't know if these modules were actually introduced. These Speech Modules contain a total of four TMC0350 Read Only Memories (ROMs) - also known as Voice Synthesis Memories TMS6100 - with 128 kBits, each.
From a technical point of view the Language Tutor and Translator are very similar to the Speak & Spell, nevertheless was its suggested retail price about 3 to 5 times higher.
A typical Solid State Speech Module, for example the French Word/Phrase module, stores 360 individual words and 78 phrases that are spoken and displayed and additional 239 individual words that are only displayed. The phrases are available with the input of a two-digit number, e.g. "19" means "What is this?".
To create complete sentences you could link phrases together: "7" + "209" + "433" will give you the French translation of "I would like" "a" "room".
The individual words are entered letter by letter and translated to the target language. Six possibilities were available, but each module could "speak" only one language
end your zip code for a shipping cost estimate - should be between $6.99 and $11.99 if you are in the USA. (May 2020).
