I remember back in 1982 or 1983, I got a copy of More Basic Computer Games[1] from a bookstore in a mall. At the time, I had a ti99/4a and I was 13 or 14 years

I remember back in 1982 or 1983, I got a copy of More Basic Computer Games[1] from a bookstore in a mall. At the time, I had a ti99/4a and I was 13 or 14 years old. On the way home we stopped at a Pizza Hut, and I was flipping through this book, and I came across the chapter about ELIZA[2] and there was a sample conversation with this thing[3], and it was blowing my mind! Was this real? WTF? How does it work? Eventually, I studied this thing and more or less figured out how it worked. A few months later, I was taking French as a 9th grader, and I had to do a project. I elected to translate ELIZA to french. I borrowed from a friend a speech synthesis module for the ti99/4a. So, you could type French sentences into it, and it would speak French back at you via the speech sythesizer module[4] Around that time, there was some kind of "show" or "fair" at which the students were invited to show off various projects or what not. So, I brought in my French ELIZA thing, with the borrowed speech synthesizer. But, this being Waveland Mississippi, nobody spoke French, so it wasn't much of a hit. Realizing this, I thought screw it, let's load up the English version. Oh boy, was that ever a hit! A crowd soon gathered (this was 1982 or 1983 I think -- computers weren't something everyone had even seen, much less talking computers, much less talking computers that appeared to understand English (and French!), at the hands of a 9th grader!), it was quite the spectacle, and they were shouting things, which I would dutifully type into my little ti99/4a. The crowd would fall reverently silent, anticipating the robotic voice (that nowadays we associate with Stephen Hawkings) and after the response, the shouting would begin anew. I remember one kid saying, "Tell it to fuck off!" Knowing a bit about how the program worked, I would rephrase their suggestions so as to produce optimal responses, so I thought about this, took a quick look around to see if any teachers were nearby, then typed in, "can you fuck off?" and it responded beautifully: "Perhaps you would like to be able to fuck off?", eliciting howls of laughter from the gathered crowd of highschoolers. And it went on like this for awhile. It was beautiful. [1] https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/ https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/ [2] https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/showpage.php?page=56 https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/showpage.php?pa... [3] https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgame/showpage.php?page=57 https://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgame/showpage.php?pag... [4] https://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/speech.htm https://www.unige.ch/medecine/nouspikel/ti99/speech.htm