Is there a voice-activated radio?

[vchimpanzee]

I know some stations tell people, "Tell Alexa" or "Tell your smart speaker" to play a specific station.

The NPR web site has reruns of "Car Talk", and the newest ones are from 2000, since they were talking about the Y2K crisis.

So they told this joke.

A man bought a Mercedes and the radio didn't work. He went back to the dealer and said for what he was paying, the radio should work. The salesman explained that he had to tell the radio what he wanted. The man got back in this car and told the radio to play country music. He heard Willie Nelson. He asked for rock and roll, and heard Elvis. He asked for easy listening and it sounded like an elevator.

Later he encountered aggressive drivers and yelled, "Morons!" The next thing he heard was, "Hi, we're Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, and you're listening to 'Car Talk'."

 

[wadio]

I know some stations tell people, "Tell Alexa" or "Tell your smart speaker" to play a specific station.

The NPR web site has reruns of "Car Talk", and the newest ones are from 2000, since they were talking about the Y2K crisis.

So they told this joke.

A man bought a Mercedes and the radio didn't work. He went back to the dealer and said for what he was paying, the radio should work. The salesman explained that he had to tell the radio what he wanted. The man got back in this car and told the radio to play country music. He heard Willie Nelson. He asked for rock and roll, and heard Elvis. He asked for easy listening and it sounded like an elevator.

Later he encountered aggressive drivers and yelled, "Morons!" The next thing he heard was, "Hi, we're Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, and you're listening to 'Car Talk'."

Interesting, I would have guessed that voice commands came much later, but Gemini says this:

1996 (First Voice Command): Mercedes-Benz introduced Linguatronic in their W140 S-Class, which allowed for about 30 commands, mostly for controlling the car phone.

Personally I prefer keyboard searching, but voice commands make sense while driving.

 

[Dick's History]

I know some stations tell people, "Tell Alexa" or "Tell your smart speaker" to play a specific station.

The NPR web site has reruns of "Car Talk", and the newest ones are from 2000, since they were talking about the Y2K crisis.

So they told this joke.

A man bought a Mercedes and the radio didn't work. He went back to the dealer and said for what he was paying, the radio should work. The salesman explained that he had to tell the radio what he wanted. The man got back in this car and told the radio to play country music. He heard Willie Nelson. He asked for rock and roll, and heard Elvis. He asked for easy listening and it sounded like an elevator.

Later he encountered aggressive drivers and yelled, "Morons!" The next thing he heard was, "Hi, we're Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers, and you're listening to 'Car Talk'."

They did give themselves a lot of leeway to play music and get into all kinds of things which had nothing to do with automobiles. I never much cared for all that but apparently people liked to hear them fool around like that.

The Magliozzis ran the Good News Garage in Cambridge MA. Although they offered conventional car repair services they specialized in diagnosing customers' auto problems and then renting them the tools and advice and space to do their own repairs. I had friends who went to them. One of the brothers was invited on WBUR FM around 1977 to discuss car repairs and made such a hit that he and his brother were given their own program. As WBUR already had a popular Shop Talk every week which dealt with audio components they then titled the Magliozzi Brother's feature "Car Talk".