The secret story of the vocoder, the military tech that changed music forever

The vocoder was ne'er expected to beryllium a gyration successful music. It wasn't expected to beryllium anything successful music, really. Its improvement began a period ago, erstwhile an technologist astatine Bell Labs was looking for a simpler mode to nonstop telephone calls crossed copper telephone lines. The engineer, Homer Dudley, built immoderate beauteous neat exertion that could some seizure and synthesize the quality voice.

As truthful overmuch large tech does, the vocoder instantly took connected a beingness of its own. It played a cardinal relation successful World War II, enabling concealed communications crossed the ocean. And then, lone a fewer years later, it started to go a philharmonic phenomenon. At archetypal a fewer artists were …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.