Talker‐independent speech recognition in commercial environments

A machine which performs long distance voice telephone dialing and charge account verification for 4000 civil service employees of the State of Illinois was installed in April 1978. This and similar installations now perform routine daily services for thousands of users. An overview of the development of this system is presented, including discussion of human factors studies, computer engineering, voice data base development, software operating systems, and the speech recognition method per se.