If you've listened to pop music in the past 40 years, you've probably heard more than a few songs with a robotic sound. That's thanks to the vocoder, a device invented by Bell Labs, the research ...

The vocoder—code name Special Customer, the Green Hornet, Project X-61753, X-Ray, and SIGSALY—started distorting human speech in earnest during World War II, in response to the excellence of German ...

The vocoder—part military technology, part musical instrument—has had quite a history. In our new Object of Interest video, we explore the vocoder in settings ranging from the Second World War to ...

A scientific tool for those lacking a voice, a means of encrypting voices during World War II, and a way to drop the funk, the vocoder has had many exhale its praises, from General Dwight D.

AT the World's Fairs in New York and San Francisco great interest was shown in the speech synthesizer shown in the Bell System exhibits. In the December number of the Bell Laboratories Record, H.

Before T-Pain was using Auto-Tune to buy girls drinks, Franklin D. Roosevelt was using the vocoder to win World War II. In “How to Wreck a Nice Beach,” music critic Dave Tompkins (The Wire, Vibe) ...

Sometimes a melody just captures your ear in a way that renders you powerless to resist. I've written before about "For You," the R&B-ish ballad recorded by both Stefon Harris and Robert Glasper last ...