As a legally blind person who started elementary school in the mid 1980s, the speech synthesizer that I associate most strongly with that time period is the Echo, installed in an Apple IIe. Here's a video demonstrating the Echo with an Apple II+:
The MESS emulator can emulate the Echo, as well as the Apple IIe itself. I spent some time playing with that configuration on my PC, for a bit of nostalgia.
I was shocked to learn years later that in the 1980s, the state of the art in speech synthesis was actually DECtalk:
But DECtalk was probably too expensive for a public school system at that time.
By the way, that clip comes from a record produced in 1986 by Dennis Klatt, the late creator of DECtalk. It's a fascinating chronicle of the history of speech synthesis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbZuBhT7HK4
The MESS emulator can emulate the Echo, as well as the Apple IIe itself. I spent some time playing with that configuration on my PC, for a bit of nostalgia.
I was shocked to learn years later that in the 1980s, the state of the art in speech synthesis was actually DECtalk:
http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt/part35.au
But DECtalk was probably too expensive for a public school system at that time.
By the way, that clip comes from a record produced in 1986 by Dennis Klatt, the late creator of DECtalk. It's a fascinating chronicle of the history of speech synthesis:
http://www.festvox.org/history/klatt.html