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DATAMATH CALCULATOR MUSEUM |
E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial
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He is afraid.He is alone.He
is three million
|
You remember this theme from Steven
Spielberg's heartwarming classic released more than 20 years ago. But let us begin the
story some years earlier.
June 11, 1978: Summer Consumer Electronics Show
Together with dozens other products like
compact powerful electronic calculators for home and office, multi-function
digital timepieces with long life batteries for men and women Texas Instruments
introduced the talking learning aid called Speak & Spell. This red and
yellow plastic, notebook-size learning aid is an outgrowth of TI's basic
research in synthetic speech. The product is designed to help children seven and
up learn how to spell and pronounce more than 200 commonly misspelled words.
Solid State Speech is an entirely new concept which stores words in a
solid-state memory much like a calculator stores numbers. Unlike tape recorders
and pull-string phonograph records used in recent years in many "speaking"
toys, TI' Solid State Speech circuitry has no moving parts. When it is told to
say something, it draws a word from memory, processes it through an integrated
circuit model of a human vocal tract and then speaks electronically. In its main
mode of operation, Speak & Spell randomly selects a word and pronounces it
in standard American English. A child presses the unit's alphabetic keys to
spell the word, which appears, letter by letter, on an eight-character display
screen. Right answers earn verbal and visual praise; wrong answers receive
patient encouragement to try again. A number of games are offered to intrigue
children of all ages. From the beginning, demand was high, even at the - then -
high retail price of about $50.
1980: Dallas
The
Speak & Spell changed ist clothes.
Instead the raised buttons of the predecessor the new one got a flat
mebrane-type keyboard. All other changes between the models are negligible, they
reflect mainly the usual process of cost optimization. More important was the
introduction of two sibblings, the yellow Speak & Read and the grey
Speak
& Math. All three educational toys used identical electronics with some
changes in the software and different solid
State Speech.
September 8, 1981: Hollywood
Steven Spielberg began filming of E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial.
December, 1981: Hollywood
Filming ends.
May 26, 1982: Cannes Fim Festival
The movie E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial was shown the first time on the important Cannes Fim Festival in France.
A 10 year old boy named Elliott (Henry
Thomas) finds a friendly alien from another planet in the family's back yard
shed and hides him in his bedroom. He can't keep his secret for long and soon
his sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) and brother Michael (Robert MacNaughton) are
in on the plan to help the alien return to his home planet. In the short time
that Elliot and E.T. spend together they live the adventure of a lifetime.
Elliot teaches E.T. about the joys and sorrows of living on Earth. In return,
E.T. teaches Elliot about the true meaning of friendship and love. The two
friends become inseparable.
June 11, 1982: USA
The theatrical release took place in
hundreds of cinemas all over the Unitet States of America. The Speak & Spell
became famous as the toy that E.T. rigged up to "phone home" in Steven
Spielberg's summer blockbuster, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Marketing people from Texas Instruments
responed quickly on the huge success of the movie. Within weeks both a E.T.
version of the Speak & Spell and a calculator appeared. The Speak &
Spell got a new box with the E.T. pictured and a Solid State Speech module
featuring E.T., the alien from another planet.
The red coloured
E.T. calculator was delivered toegther with a small figure of the famous E.T. creature. From the
technical view it was just another design of the original TI-1030
calculator introduced earlier.
Later even for the Touch & Tell educational toy a E.T. cartridge was released.
July 19, 1985: USA
Theatrical
re-release.
March 22, 2002: USA
Theatrical re-release of the 20th anniversary edition.
March 28, 2002: Germany
Theatrical re-release of the 20th
anniversary edition.
Universal Studios: Florida, USA
Recently Mark Cook, a friend of the Datamath Calculator Museum, travelled from United Kingdom to Florida and visited the Universal Studios. Waiting in the line to board the "E.T. Adventure" ride he walked through a forest created to look like the one in the movie and in the middle he spotted the famous communicator device!
This replica is complete with a working Speak & Spell which scrolls a message across its display.
You may notice that E.T. obviously used a Speak
& Spell (Version 2) to create his wonderful communication device to
"phone home".
If you are interested in the mysterious communicator E.T. assembled from
everyday items found in Elliot's house to sent a signal to reach his
extraterrestrial family you should visit the Chicago Museum of Science and
Industry or just open a Speak & Spell.
If you think about your own communicator read the story of Minneapolis based The Bakken, a A Library and Museum of Electricity in Life here.
Find a lot of info about the first release of the movie E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial in Tim Dirks Filmsite covering the 100 Greatest Films.
The 20th anniversary edition re-release is covered in its own website www.et20.com.
Read more about the Universal Studios Orlando and the E.T. attraction here.
Don't miss Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope (1977) featuring the Exactra 19 calculator. or at least one part of it...
If you have additions to the above article please email: joerg@datamath.org.
© Joerg Woerner, January 25, 2002. Courtesy of the pictures is Universal Pictures, Cyberspace Creations, Tim Dirks and Mark Cook. Thank you! Their appearances on this site are for informational, non-profit use, and may not be redistributed without expressed written consent.