# HARPY **Domain:** Artificial Intelligence / Speech Recognition **Doc Type:** System Node **Maturity:** Historical ## Definition **HARPY** was a Carnegie Mellon speech-understanding system developed during ARPA's [[wiki/Speech Understanding Research|Speech Understanding Research]] program. By 1976 it processed connected speech across a 1,011-word vocabulary on PDP-10-class hardware. ## Historical Significance Surviving project material reported that HARPY satisfied the original program goals and exceeded some stated objectives. Disagreement over testing conditions and the meaning of success nevertheless contributed to the program's termination and the loss of its intended follow-on. ## Corpus Context The system is the opening case in [[articles/Modern Artificial Intelligence in the 1970s|Modern Artificial Intelligence in the 1970s]], where demonstrated capability and institutional authorization are treated as separate events. ## Sources / Provenance - Bruce Lowerre and Raj Reddy, _The HARPY Speech Understanding System_, Carnegie Mellon University, 1976. - National Research Council, _Funding a Revolution_, 1999.