TTS
TTS or text-to-speech is speech synthesis from human language text. I actually first heard rudimentary samples of it on a Commodore 64 computer at my friend, Dylan's, house in 1987. At the time it only understood very basic phonetic spellings, and even then it was very poor. However by the mid-1990s, on Mac System 7 or maybe 8 on Apple computers, you could use SimpleText to read English text with fairly high precision. I had already begun using TTS for proofreading letters that I would print and mail or FAX. When email gained in popularity in 1997, I was already getting my computer to read messages to me, and also getting it to read back my draft emails before I sent them. In 1999, there were a number of options on Microsoft Windows computers, including third-party apps as well as a free Speech SDK you could download from Microsoft with a basic TTS app. As I got into C#/Dot Net development in the mid-2000s, I also developed my own clipboard saving TTS app. Is it early 2010s, I transitioned back to using Mac computers, and was delighted that both Safari and Google Chrome browsers had easy select to speak technology.
I enjoy using the Kindle app on my Apple computer because of its easy text-to-speech feature. My relationship with this technology is one of the inspirations for our app, AutoWIKI.