Hello and welcome to Prism of the Past, a semi-weekly series about historical events, people, and situations, from the fascinating to the forgotten.

I'm the Illuminati, and today we're going to talk about the history of voice banks as well as get into the history of one of the most famous voice banks out there, Hattsune Mikku. Vocalaid software is meant to provide a virtual singer for music production, but are these singers really able to emulate the emotion of a flesh and blood musician?

Or are they blooming within the industry because they're flawless?

Well, let's get right into it. of the past.

of the past. If we start at the very beginning of voice banks or just machines meant to replicate

human voice in general, we're going to end up in the year 1779 when Russian professor

Christian Kretsenstein developed a machine capable of generating the five long vowel sounds

A E I O U. It wasn't until 1961 when a machine sang though and New Jersey-based Bell Laboratory

scientists had an IBM computer sing the song Daisy Bell also known as

bicycle-built for two. 2. I'm crazy all for the love of you.

It won't be a sign of wearing.

I ask the whole area. It sounds about as horrific as you would expect, like something from a sci-fi horror movie.

Even so, not bad for a machine that's never had voice lessons, right?

The IBM 7094 made history and speaking of sci-fi, the science fiction novelist Arthur

C. Clark actually witnessed a demonstration for the

piece while visiting his friend, the electric engineer and fellow sci-fi writer John

R. Pierce. According to my source, Clark was so impressed that he incorporated the 7094's musical performance in the

1968 novel and the script for the 1968 film 2001 A Space Odyssey. One of the first things that Clark's fictional Hal 9000 computer had learned when it

originally programmed was the song Daisy Bell.

Near the end of the story when the computer was being deactivated or put to sleep by astronaut

Dave Bowman, it lost its mind and degenerated to singing Daisy Bell. Now. I'll for some love help you.

Years later, around the late 90s,

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