How Does Stephen Hawking Communicate

I am sure you must have heard about Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest scientists in the world and also the writer of his famous book, 'A Brief History of Time'. He is an English theoretical physicist and cosmologist. From a very young age, he had been interested in science and technology. When he was young, he became disabled due to a Motor Neurone Disease which was known as the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). There are people who suffer from this same problem, but in his case it became the most protracted case that was ever documented. It was said that a person with ALS, do not usually survive for more than 10 years. Let me remind you Hawking is 68 years old now and when he was detected by this disease, he was 21 years old. Slowly he lost the ability to use his limbs and could not even talk properly and now, he is completely paralyzed.

In 1985, he contracted pneumonia and his condition was so bad that in order to keep him alive, tracheotomy was carried out on him and what was left of his speech, he lost even that. What he did not lose was his will to survive and do something great. Ever since he lost his voice, he started communicating with the help of his electronic voice synthesizer. Let us now learn more about how does Stephen Hawking talk using this synthesizer, in details.

DECtalk Synthesizer

If you would like to know how does Stephen Hawking speak, then first let us know more about the machine which helps him to speak. The DECtalk is a speech synthesizer and also a text-to-speech technology, that is used by people like Stephen Hawking, who cannot communicate properly. This machine was first developed by the Digital Equipment Corporation in the 1980s. One could connect this synthesizer with the telephone and also any other devices that had an asynchronous serial port. Stephen Hawking used the DECtalk DTC01 voice synthesizer and he had used this for a long time. He had used this technology for so long that he was associated with it. The accent used by him was that of an American English accent, which, even though had become obsolete, he still used it because, as he said that he identified himself with that particular voice. Now he is using NeoSpeech's VoiceText speech synthesizer.

Using the Synthesizer

The DECtalk DTC 01 voice synthesizer has a predictive program with the help of which the user can actually select the words and frame a sentence. It is a tedious process and it took him at least 20 minutes to frame a sentence properly. He uses his cheek to enter the data and the synthesizer which has the predictive program installed in it, needs only a few characters to auto-complete the entire sentence. The IR sensors in the synthesizer, that triggers the twitching of the cheek muscle present under the eye. Although completely paralyzed, he can only use his cheek muscles and he uses this to type and to type just one sentence it takes him almost 5 minutes.

Earlier, he used the Equalizer which was a software developed by Walter Woltosz and in order to use this software, Hawkins could spell by tapping a button with his hand. A screen is mounted on the wheelchair in a position from where it is useful for him to see. A cursor moves on the upper part of the screen and he can stop it by pressing a switch which is in his hand. It is with the help of this switch that he selects words which are printed on the lower part of the screen. Although he could type just four words per minute, that was the only way he could communicate with the world and it was with the help of this technology that he wrote so many books and also gave countless lectures.

David Mason from the Cambridge Adaptive Communication later on added a computer that would run the Equalizer and that would convert the text to audible speech. The voice that was used sounded a bit robotic and somewhat American and this was the voice that the world became used to as Stephen Hawking's voice. He himself loved the voice so much, that long after the machine became obsolete, he kept it.

For typing, there is a muscle in his eye which he can twitch and which when connected to the computer screen of his chair, twitches and flips over the alphabets, one letter at a time twitching and choosing the letter that he wants. Although he can type just 4 letters per minute, he never gave up hope.

It's a wonder how a person who has lost the power of speech and movement, can carry out such researches with the twitch of his eye muscles.