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Subject: Collector's Corner..The Voice Feature

Author: Steve B

Date: 16:12:46 02/15/06


As is well known ,the inventor of the first commercially available computer to
be able to play a game of chess was the legendary Ron Nelson

not so well known however, is that Nelson also pioneered the use of the voice
chip for his computers
the very first computer to use this chip was called appropriately called the
Voice Chess Challenger released in 1979
it had a cold ,computer like sound to it, and could only call out the moves and
make a few simple statements
the VCC was released in two versions..the VCC and the Advanced VCC


to celebrate the use of this new feature Fidelity released the VCC and AVCC in
two tournament sized wooden boards
the boards could not recognize the moves and the moves had to be inputted via
the Keyboard as in the VCC-AVCC
but the boards themselves and the pieces were magnificent and worth owning just
as a chess set alone

the Fidelity Decorator Challenger:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cpaa2@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=fc80&.dnm=44fb.jpg&.src=ph

the Fidelity Grandmaster Voice:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cpaa2@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=fc80&.dnm=1b67.jpg&.src=ph

to this day Nelson continues to perfect the voice feature increasing the
vocabulary with each new release for Excalibur

the upcoming Talking Chess Phantom Robot will feature the most elaborate voice
feature ever heard in a dedicated computer to date

Speechless Regards
Steve



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