When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Originally developed for telecommunications and military applications in the 1930s, the vocoder, ...

If you've listened to pop music in the past 40 years, you've probably heard more than a few songs with a robotic sound. That's thanks to the vocoder, a device invented by Bell Labs, the research ...

The vocoder was never intended to change the music scene. In fact, it wasn’t meant for music at all. Its origins trace back a century, when engineer Homer Dudley at Bell Labs sought a more efficient ...