| WORDS+ INC, HISTORY AND GENERAL INFORMATION |
 Words+ INC was formed in 1981 by Walter and Virginia "Ginger" Woltosz in Langcaser California which offered the first PC based commuincations system for people with severe disabilities. The first device was designed and built by Walter around some kind of early PC (an Apple II has been referenced in some places) for his mother-in-law who had Lou Gherig's disease. Some articles site he literally built the first iteration over night. One of the offshoots of this early machine is in the Smithsonian Museum. Words+ is notable for offering the first PC based augmentative commuincation system - or "AAC" as they are referred to now. They also created portable speech synthesizers, keyboard emmulators with integrated speech, word prediction technologies, first picture based system for preliterate users (Talking Screen!!). Each of these first advancements in technology helped people who might have otherwise been stuck without a reaosnable means to communicate with others. In 1983, Walter left the Aerospace industry to pursue being CEO of his new company full time. He was CEO until 1996 when he left to form Simulation+, again with his wife Ginger, a Healthcare company that designed simulation software for testing pharmaceutacles using simulation without requiring the use of lab animals. In 1985 they worked with world reknowned Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on his communications hardware and software. Stephen used Words+ equipment to write the book "A Brief History of Time" using the E-Z Keys Software. The "Perfect Paul" voice used by the machine was the one preferred by Hawking for communications. I don't have any details what actual system(s) Hawking used. Walt has also gained a spot on the IMDB as he was technical assitant on several movies,s including those that involve his AAC products, such as Right To Die (1987), Hugo Pool (1997), A Brief History of Time (1991), and was actually ON-SCREEN in the movie Hawking (2013) as himself (I really need to re-watch that one). WORDS+ PRODUCTS I'm going to attempt to document all of the products here, including the stuff not used with PCs, so we can get a better picture of this company and what they made and used. MessageMate Devices
Computer Based AAC
Software
F.A.Q. While I have not gotten questions yet, I figured I'd answer a few anyway....
Q:How Did You Come to know of Words+?
Q:Can you detail more about the system you procured?  The Words+ unit is a Commpac System 2000 unit that was velcroed to the bottom (no longer) and connected to the laptop via the Parellel Port and a modified Socket I/O PCMCIA serial port card that was modified to have a ribbon cable run to the back to connect to the Words+'s serial port. The Words+ unit itself ran off a 12v NiCad battery that had started to leak, so I removed it and wired in a 1/8" phono jack to run it off an AC Adaptor. It has Multivoice 1.128 firmware on it (announces "Welcome to MultiVoice 1.128" when it starts in the last voice used). The whole shebang came from a Louisana State University Hospital. What's kind of cool is I may have found one of the patientts who used that laptop mentioned in an article I have linked to below.
Q:Do you have a Disability that requires an AAC?
Q:Do you have any legitimate uses for this machine since you don't need Alternative Communications? MY RESOURCES - WHERE I GOT THIS INFORMATION I wrote this page digging and digging and digging all over the web for several years, because AACs are not a commonly known device. I find it crazy that I just happened to **bump** into this device at random with no intent, and it was kind of a curiosity anyway because I knew Stephen Hawking had something similar (turns out possibly the same device). Actually, the research has been an interesting go too, like Auburn University granted a doctorate to Woltosz for his work on these machines.
Words+, Inc Official Website |
I bought a 1994 NEC Versa M/75 laptop computer from an e-bay auction in 2019 for classic DOS/Windows gaming purposes, and it came with this weird box on the bottom that said "Words+ Commpac System 2000". So naturally, I was curious and started my usual rapid pile of research to find out what it was. A guy at VOGONS told me what it was on day one, so I started running down the AAC Rabbit-Hole.