The construction and use of the Playback permitted a systematic study of the interactions between the individual sounds of speech. In turn, this led to pioneering work in the 1950s by Franklin S. Cooper, Pierre C. Delattre, Alvin M. Liberman, John M. Borst, Louis J. Gerstman, and many others on determining the underlying critical acoustic "cues" for speech. This research had a revolutionary effect on speech science, and was fundamental to the development of our modern techniques of speech synthesis, the development of reading machines for the blind, and the study of speech perception and recognition. The Pattern Playback was last used in an experimental study by Robert Remez, in 1976. The device now resides in the basement of Haskins Laboratories, in New Haven, Connecticut, where it is often shown to our many visitors.
This web attempts to capture a bit of this history and provides a brief, virtual tour of the Pattern Playback.