The technology allows companies to save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on inefficient operator based call centers. .
The Origin of Speech Recognition.
Speech recognition research began in the late 1940's when the U.S. Defense Department realized the need for an automatic language translator. In hopes of intercepting Russian messages for military defense, the U.S. government funded the early research to further advance this technology. As an appreciation for the technology began to become more and more evident, the U.S. government later developed the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) (Christensen). .
Development .
After the 1950's, much of the actual developments in speech recognition began to emerge. IBM was the first commercial company to devote a part of its research and development to speech recognition. After periods of trial and error, IBM finally introduced the first computer designed to acknowledge speech patterns. At the beginning of the 1960's, further development in speech recognition continued. As researchers continued to study programs enabling the recognition of human speech, industry standards were also developed to enhance the ability of current recognition systems. During the mid 1960's "Automatic Prototyping" was developed during the early 1970's. The standard allowed computers to seek distinct sounds, which are then saved for later analysis. In the early 1970's, "Dynamic programming" was developed which enabled computers to recognize normal "conversational speech despite variations in rates of speech." (IBM). In the late 1970's many companies began to realize the potential application breakthrough for speech recognition. In 1978 Texas Instruments introduced their first toy featuring speech recognition capabilities. The toy was the company's first educational "single chip speech synthesizer and spell toy." In the early 1980's, dictation software became more and more advanced.
