Ear Worms 005 - The Vocoder & Voder Speech Synthesizer, and Contributions of Hermann Von Helholtz

I episode of Ear worms, we are going to cover two topics that are not directly related, but do have an indirect relationship. Hermann Von Helmholtz (1821 - 1894) was a very eclectic scientist who made many contributions to the history of science. We will focus on his work in aural perception and sound related subjects as they pertain to the history of electronic and electro-acoustic music. We will also discuss the work of Homer Dudley at Bell Laboratories in the invention of the Vocoder speech analyzer and Voder speech synthesizer. The Voder was patented in 1938 by Dudley and Bell Labs and presented in the World Fair of 1939 in New York. this work was initially for making early telephone communications more clear and efficient, but has gone on to be a major tool in electronic and electro-acoustic music.