More specifically — Talking Planes, Talking Trains, and Talking Automobiles.
To put this in perspective, let’s climb into a time-machine to discover who invented the first plain, train, and automobile. We might be brought back to 1758 to rediscover the first steam powered railway, The Middleton Railway, UK. It’s actually still running as a tourist event — visit http://www.middletonrailway.org.uk/. We might then take a short skip in time and distance to France, 1769 to witness Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot build the first self-propelled road vehicle. It was actually a military tractor for the French army. It was steam powered, three wheeled, and moved 2.5 mph. Jump forward 142 years to 1903 and meet Orville and Wilbur Wright making the first successful flight in history of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. And at each stop we’ll inform each inventor that their inventions are able to talk in 2016; hoping of course we don’t disrupt the space-time continuum, as Christopher Lloyd would insist.
The history is sketchy, but it wasn’t until the late 1970’s / early 1980’s that voice warning systems made their debut in aircraft and the automobile. The system used a small box located under the vehicle’s dashboard that contained a small, white plastic record disc that used a magnetic cartridge to play voice commands through the vehicle’s audio system. Since the 1960s a digital core network has replaced the traditional analog transmission and signaling systems in telephony. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s technological advances to include digitization/automation became augmented into every mode of transportation. Kim Crow’s voice is reportedly the first ever to be digitized for aircraft.
Regretfully, we can’t tell you what specific make and model transport vehicles we’re voicing. Due to government and corporate confidentiality agreements, our lips are sealed. But we can tell you we’re in eight (8) automobile manufactures, which puts us in many models; and six (6) transit systems (some abroad). And due to the generic nature of the work, we are in any number of commercial aircraft.
The female/male voices used for various U.S. commercial and military aircraft were commonly referred to as Bitching Betty, Barking Bob, Nagging Nora (UK), Hank the Yank (Boeing, New Zealand), and Sonya as in “gets on ya nerves” (London Underground rail). We don’t know the current nicknames, and we shutter to speculate. Maybe YOU can help us out. We would love to know what you named your car’s navigation system or instrumentation system. Be sure and let us know. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Transportation is just a percentage of our workload, but we love being an important part of the industry. When your company needs voice work, we’re standing by. Visit PassionFruitVO.com TODAY!
Passion Fruit Voiceovers – Providing enterprise scale female voice-over talent and male voice-over artists for global clientele. Services include: IVR/TTS/Mobile Media Content, Audio Engineering Services, Source-Connect / ISDN / FTP / Phone Patch, Commercial and Narration VO, e-Learning Courses, On-Hold Messaging, Multiple Language Voice Talent, and Language Translation.
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