PutThatThere

“Put That There” is a voice and gesture interactive system implemented at the Architecture Machine Group at MIT. It allows a user to build and modify a graphical database on a large format video display. The goal of the research is a simple, conversational interface to sophisticated computer interaction. https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/put-that-there-voice-and-gesture-at-the-graphics-interface/

The learning curve required to master each piece of equipment in the Architecture Machine Group was steep, so Nicholas Negroponte assigned each device a “mother” who would be responsible for writing the software or building the hardware to help it grow into something useful. For his master’s thesis, Chris Schmandt adopted a little box that, when strapped to your wrist, would tell the lab’s interactive computer where your wrist was and where it was pointing. Known as a six-degree-of-freedom device, it had been developed to mount on the helmets of helicopter pilots, who used them in simulators for training and over the battlefield for targeting; today low-cost versions are in many virtual-reality headsets. Eric Hulteen ’80, SM ’82, was given the task of developing software for the NEC voice recognizer. Working together, Schmandt and Hulteen created Put That There, a drawing system controlled by voice and gestures that they first demoed in 1979. To run Put That There, you’d sit in a leather Eames chair in the lab’s soundproof “media room” and point your hand at the room’s wall-sized rear-projection screen, which was illuminated by the light valve, a projector on the other side of the wall. With the sensor and the microphones set up, you could say “Put a yellow circle there,” and the computer would obey. If you didn’t specify where the circle should go, the computer would ask “Where?” and wait for you to point and say “There!” Schmandt says it was one of the two first conversational systems ever written. https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/24/135828/the-geek/