Speak & Spell may refer to:

See also

Speak & Spell is the debut album by the British synthpop group Depeche Mode, recorded and released in 1981. The album peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart.

Overview

This was the only Depeche Mode album with Vince Clarke as a member of the band. Clarke wrote most of the songs for the band, before departing to form Yazoo and later Erasure.

The album is significantly lighter in tone and melody than their later work, a direction which can largely be attributed to Clarke's writing. After he left, Martin Gore took over songwriting duties, writing almost all of the band's material. Later albums written by him would explore darker subjects and melodies.

The album title alludes to the then-popular "Speak & Spell" electronic toy.

When interviewed by Simon Amstell for Channel 4's Popworld programme in 2005, Gore and Fletcher both stated that the track "What's Your Name?" was their least favourite Depeche Mode song of all time.

Critical reception

Melody Maker praised the album, saying the singles "New Life" and "Just Can’t Get Enough" "sound as fresh and unflagging as every new number" of their time. Although reviewer Paul Colbert noted that there are a few songs like "Nodisco" that tend to "repeat earlier thoughts and feels", he praised "the gleefully untroubled surface" of "What’s Your Name", [...] "the moody whisper" of "Puppets" and the tautly sketched around octave-leaping bass lines and dark vocals of "Photographic".

The Speak & Spell line is a series of electronic hand-heldchild computers created by Texas Instruments that consist of a speech synthesizer, a keyboard, and a receptor slot to receive one of a collection of ROM game library modules (collectively covered under patent US 3934233 ). The first Speak & Spell was introduced at the summer Consumer Electronics Show in June 1978, making it one of the earliest handheld electronic devices with a visual display to use interchangeable game cartridges.

Background

The Speak & Spell was created by a small team of engineers led by Paul Breedlove, himself an engineer, with Texas Instruments (TI) during the late 1970s. Development began in 1976 with an initial budget of $25,000, as an outgrowth of TI's research into speech synthesis. The completed proof version of the first console utilized TI's trademarked Solid State Speech technology to store full words in a solid state format similar to the manner in which calculators of the time stored numbers. Additional purchased cartridges (called expansion modules) could be inserted through the battery receptacle to provide new solid-state libraries and new games. This represented the first time an educational toy utilized speech that was not recorded on tape or phonograph record (as with Mattel's See 'n Say line or the earlier Chatty Cathy dolls).

Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin clericus meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educated. Clark evolved from "clerk". First records of the name are found in 12th century England. The name has many variants.

Clark is the twenty-seventh most common surname in the United Kingdom, including placing fourteenth in Scotland. Clark is also an occasional given name, as in the case of Clark Gable.

According to the 1990 United States Census, Clark was the twenty-first most frequently encountered surname, accounting for 0.23% of the population. Notable people with the surname include:

Clark is the official team mascot of Major League Baseball's Chicago Cubs. He was announced on January 13, 2014 as the first official mascot in the modern history of the Cubs franchise. He was introduced that day at the Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center's pediatric developmental center along with some of the Cubs' top prospects such as number one draft pick Kris Bryant and Albert Almora, Jorge Soler, Mike Olt and Eric Jokisch. Over a dozen Cubs prospects were attending the Cubs' Rookie Development Program that week. The Cubs become the 27th team in Major League Baseball to have a mascot, leaving the Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees as the remaining franchises without mascots. According to the Cubs' press release, Clark is a response to fan demands (expressed via surveys and interviews) for more kid-friendly elements at Wrigley Field Cubs games to keep pace with games in other cities that have more to offer youth fans.

Description

He is a "young, friendly Cub" who will wear a backwards baseball cap and greet fans entering Wrigley Field, which is located at the corner of Clark Street (for which he is named) and Addison Street. North Clark Street borders the third base side of Wrigley Field. According to the Cubs, the fictional character Clark is descended from Joa, the franchise's original live Bears mascot in 1916.

Clark is a common surname.

Clark may also refer to:

Places

Antarctica

Philippines

United States

Education

Other uses