As Boing Boing informs, on this day in 1974, Donald Sherman, who had Mรถbius Syndrome, a rare congenital disease that results in facial paralysis, and had the inability to speak, was able to order a pizza by placing a call from the Michigan State University’s Artificial Language Laboratory. The revolutionary text-to-voice synthesiser (see also) was designed by university researchers and the successful exchange was captured for posterity by local media, though it didn’t go off without a hitch as the synthetic voice was unexpected by the operators—with major delivery chain Domino’s hanging up on the caller—until a sympathetic employee at a small pizzeria took the order. Celebrated annually on campus, Domino’s has been furnishing free pizzas for the commemoration, ostensibly out of the bad publicity for hanging up on Sherman all those years ago.
twelve years ago: Germany takes on informal hoteliers
thirteen years ago: Nativity scenes plus more examples of pareidolia
fourteen years ago: unseasonable weather, loose change plus piracy and net-neutrality
sixteen years ago: US pressures allies on Afghanistan
seventeen years ago: bail-outs and quasi financial institutions
