40 years ago this week. Don is still around Lansing, I think.
Every year, the researchers, students, and technology users who make up the community of the Michigan State University Artificial Language Laboratory celebrate the anniversary of the first use of a speech prosthesis in history: the use by a man with a communication disorder to order a pizza over the telephone using a voice synthesizer. This high-tech sociolinguistic experiment was conducted at the Lab on the evening of December 4, 1974. Donald Sherman, who has Moebius Syndrome and had never ordered a pizza over the phone before, used a system designed by John Eulenberg and J. J. Jackson incorporating a Votrax voicesynthesizer, a product of the Federal Screw Works Co. of Troy, Michigan. The inventor of the Votrax voice synthesizer was Richard Gagnon from Birmingham, MI.
The event was covered at the time by the local East Lansing cable news reporter and by a reporter from the State News. About seven years later, in 1981, a BBC production team produced a documentary about the work of the Artificial Language Laboratory and included a scene of a man with cerebral palsy, Michael Williams, ordering a pizza with a newer version of the Lab's speech system. This second pizza order became a part of the documentary, which was broadcast throughout the U.S. as part of the "Nova" science series and internationally as part of the BBC's "Horizon" series.
In January, 1982, the Nova show on the Artificial Language Lab was shown for the first time. The Artificial Language Lab held a premiere party in the Communication Arts and Sciences Building for all the persons who appeared in the program plus all faculty members of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences and their families. The Domino's company generously provided free pizzas for all the guests.