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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