MovieChat Forums > Young Sheldon (2017) Discussion > The computer

The computer

posted 6 years ago by hoosiergirl (214)
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I didn't get my first desktop computer until 1998, so I don't know--was the program Sheldon was using to ask the computer for help and a female voice was answering, was that a real thing in 1989?

I thought it was funny how they portrayed it pretty realistically, the uses they had for the computer. I can remember friends having a computer that early on and it was like they showed, there wasn't a whole lot for the average person to do like there was later on after Windows was invented. I remember women putting recipes in the computer because they couldn't think of anything else to do.

[–] BugisStreetAnnie (1296) 6 years ago

I didn't get my first desktop computer until 1998, so I don't know--was the program Sheldon was using to ask the computer for help and a female voice was answering, was that a real thing in 1989?

I wondered that too because there was an episode of 'The Facts of Life' that probably aired at the time this show is set, 1989, and Jo was on a computer at her college that would speak to her as she typed in questions. I thought that was simply make-believe because I'd never heard of a computer doing that back then.

[–] MAGolding (1125) 6 years ago

It is easier for a computer to speak than to listen and hear what you say. That takes speech recognition and voice recognition. But it is (comparatively) easy to program a computer to use the speakers to pronounce the words in its response to you. If the computer and program is capable of formulating a response in English it is capable of deciding how it should be pronounced and sending that information to the speaker while probably also displaying the response on the screen.

Back in the 1960s a massive computer was programmed to sing "Daisy". I believe that in 2001: A Space Odyssey when HAL is being disconnected and sings "Daisy" that is a recording of an actual computer singing "Daisy".

But I don't remember when it became possible for an ordinary home computer to speak as well as in the show.

[–] Jennie_Portrait (804) 6 years ago

I don't remember home computers speaking back then at all. If the technology was available, it was very expensive and very few people had them. As a dramatic device, it does work better to hear the computer's response.

[–] dt123 (697) 6 years ago

The only thing I remember from 1989 "said" by a computer was a series of sound files that were little snippets of movie recordings. You could pick which one you wanted for what purpose. (This was on Macs.) Like if you deleted something, you could have it be Curly from the Three Stooges go "wahwahwahwah" or closing a file you cold hear Arnold Schwartzenegger say as The Terminator, "My CPU is a neural net processor." There were role-paying games, but I remember them being totally written words, not spoken words.

[–] tlm550 (188) 6 years ago

Eliza was the AI program... that was originally created in 1966. It has been written for many computer systems. It is more of a sample or demonstration utility.
The speech module was something separate.. Those were available in 1982, maybe before. The Commodore computers in 1982 had all of that stuff available. And then the PC computers (IBM compatibles) had it once they added speakers and sound capability. All of the more popular computer systems in the 80s eventually had speech available, most, if not all, were with an add-on device

[–] hoosiergirl (214) 6 years ago

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[–] Satan2016 (23931) 6 years ago

In 89 a PC could have a sound card, MIDI, SVGA, ethernet, internet, email, CD-ROM, Windows 2.