0.2 Demonstrating the speak n spell  (Page 4/4)

One result I tie to that success to the introduction of the product was a request to have a Speak N Spell shown on the Today Show. We had created a special version of the product which split the product in half so that the front of the product could be displayed with the internal circuit laying next to it. this was a nice way of allowing someone to use the product while looking at the electronics in the case. As an aside, this same demonstration device was donated to the Computer Museum which was in Boston at that time and is now in the Bay Area in California. Figure 1 shows a later version of the exploded one shown on the Today Show.

We had made a couple of decisions in creating the plastic case and keyboard for the product that would last longer under the constant use by children. Unfortunately, one of those decisions was to have the name "Texas Instruments" in raised letters on the display bezel. Further, we chose to emphasize the name of the product on the keyboard bezel. When the demonstration was shown on the Today Show, due to these two decisions, it was not possible to see that the product was from Texas Instruments. This created quite a panic within the corporation with fingers pointing in every direction looking for who it was that made those bad decisions. Rapidly the fingers began to align such that they all pointed to me. Even the stylist who created the detailed concept for the plastic case and all of the visible parts of the product pointed to me as the one person who made those decisions. Fortunately I still had the memo the stylist (his name was also Gene) and let him read a copy of it. He stopped playing the "let's blame Gene" game once he realized he was also guilty, and, unfortunately, also named "Gene".

Immediately a task force was formed to make sure that it would always be obvious that the Speak N Spell came from Texas Instruments. As I remember, I was put in charge of the task force and that one of the members of my team was the company's CEO, Fred Bucy. It was obvious that it was important to make TI visible on the product. Two changes were made: 1) The "Texas Instruments" name was changed from an embaussed to Gold lettering on the display bezel, and 2) a TI bug was added to the lower right hand corner of the keyboard bezel. As head of the task force, I tasked Mr. Bucy with determining the size, location and color of the TI bug. I am glad to report that he did an excellent job and that the product went in to production with both changes included.

Glen Thornton told me a story recently that I had forgotten about. While the Speak N Spell was being demonstrated on the Today Show, a bug was uncovered. The Speak N Spell asked "Please spell union". It was spelled correctly which the Speak N Spell responded "that is correct, now spell union". It uncovered a bug in the random number generator used to select words to be spelled. It was a minor bug but in front of a very large audience. The bug was immediately fixed.

To children

The ultimate demonstration was to a group of children. We had demonstrated the Speak&Spell to a lot of people, but not to children. So, in the spring of 1978 we began the process of bringing in several children to play on the simulators as we watched their reaction in using the product.

We weren’t far into the discussion of how we would handle the demonstrations to the children when our legal staff inserted themselves to tell us that we would have to put the children under Non Disclosure Agreements before they could play with the product. After it dawned on all of us that the children were under age and could not legally held to an NDA, we decided to require the parents to sign an NDA so their children could participate. My thought was we had the best solution to keeping the product secret until its announcement at the June Consumer Electronic Show in Chicago – we were in Lubbock, Texas. As I put it with a smile on my face, we could put it on the front page of the local paper, the Avalanche Journal, and it would still be a secret to the rest of the world. We went ahead with it and had the parents sign the NDA after we had explained to them and their children why we wanted to keep it a secret.

This was our first chance to see how children would react to the Speak N Spell. We were fairly sure it would be well received. But then it was our baby and we just knew everyone would love it. The children loved it beyond our expectations and didn’t want to quit playing when each of their times was up. And, as I predicted, the secret stayed in Lubbock.

A month or so later we had working silicon and a couple of assembled products for early testing. At the time my two daughters were toddlers (2 and 3). I decided to take one home to see what they would do with the Speak N Spell. They both liked it very much and actually fought a bit over it. I decided I could fix the problem by bringing a second Speak N Spells home the next night so each could have one to play with. What I found a bit surprising was my youngest daughter had grabbed both of them and was toddling off with one in each hand. I concluded that it would be a successful product and I had brilliant daughters. (Both conclusions have been proven correct over the years).

I’ll end this discussion with a story I told in the beginning of Chapter 1. It is worth repeating in a shorter form to finish out this chapter. It was in the fall of 1978. The Speak N Spell had been shipping for a month or so and was already showing up in stores. I was at a store with my wife and two daughters and, as was my habit, I took the girls with me to the toy department. As we approached the toys I noticed a group of children huddled up in one area. As I got closer to the huddle, I noticed that they were surrounding a demonstrator Speak N Spell playing with it. There wasn’t enough money in the world to match that moment in the store.