Image: Google
This weekend, Google will release a Doodle celebrating what would have been Stephen Hawking’s 80th birthday. The two and a half minute-long video will go live in the US at midnight ET tonight (9pm PT) and includes a narration in the physicist’s own computer-generated voice (created and used with permission from his estate) outlining his work and painting a message of hope for the future.
Hawking’s digital voice was one of the most recognizable characteristics of the late physicist, who used it to speak after losing his voice due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Although more advanced artificial voices were developed over the course of his lifetime, the physicist continued to use the original voice with its American accent after…