1935—Caryl Haskins and Franklin Cooper along with Paul A. Zahl, a mammalian biologist, and Seymour Hutner, then a Cornell graduate student in microbiology and biochemistry, established Haskins Laboratories. They determined as a team the feasibility of General Electric Company’s plan to build million-volt X-ray machines for cancer treatment and for genetics research. Part of their work was done at the Graduate schools of Harvard and M.I.T. and Union College in Schenectady, NY.

1939—Haskins Laboratories moved to New York City.

1940s—Haskins Laboratories was commissioned by the U.S. government to begin evaluating and developing technologies for assisting blinded World War II veterans. Alvin Liberman joined the research team.

1941—Haskins Laboratories moved to 305 East 43rd Street, New York where it remained for 28 years. Caryl Haskins was elected President of the Carnegie Institution and Director of DuPont de Nemours, while still Director of The Haskins Laboratories.

1950s—Haskins Laboratories President Franklin Cooper invented the Pattern Playback, the earliest speech synthesis device. The Motor Theory of Speech Perception was born.

1960s—Katherine S. Harris, working with Franklin Cooper and Peter MacNeilage, were the first researchers in the U.S. to use electromyographic techniques, pioneered at the University of Tokyo, to study the neuromuscular organization of speech, beginning the long Haskins history of research on speech production. Leigh Lisker and Arthur Abramson looked for simplification at the level of articulatory action in the voicing of certain contrasting consonants (VOT). Donald Shankweiler and Michael Studdert-Kennedy introduced dichotic listening into speech research. Alvin Liberman, Cooper, Shankweiler, and Studdert-Kennedy summarized and interpreted fifteen years of research in “Perception of the Speech Code.” Haskins acquired its first computer (a Honeywell DDP224) and connected it to a speech synthesizer. Ignatius Mattingly and colleagues adapted the Pattern Playback rules to write the first computer program for synthesizing continuous speech from a phonetically spelled input. A further step toward a reading machine for the blind combined Mattingly’s program with an automatic look-up procedure for converting alphabetic text into strings of phonetic symbols.

1970s—The Haskins Laboratories split into two divisions, the Microbiology Division, under Seymour Hutner affiliated with Pace University, and the Speech Recognition and Cognition Division affiliated with Yale University.

The laboratories moved to New Haven, CT and entered into affiliation agreements with Yale University and the University of Connecticut.

The development of dynamic sinewave synthesis derived from human speech and the first articulatory synthesizer that can be controlled in a physically meaningful way and used for interactive experiments.

1980s—Extensive research support was provided for understanding the importance of phoneme awareness for reading development. Several researchers developed compatible theoretical accounts of speech production, speech perception, and phonological knowledge.

1990s—Some of the earliest work was conducted using neuroimaging to study reading and reading disorders, as was early work on speech perception in infants.

2000s—Application of new devices for studying speech movements and eye movements during reading and speech. Moved to new facilities at 300 George Street in New Haven. Launched the Early Reading Success Initiative.

2010s—Major discovery that brain circuitry for reading is similar across different languages. Ultrasound technology began being used to treat speech disorders. An international meeting (Haskins Global Summit) was convened on improving health, development, and learning of children in disadvantaged populations.

2023—Most researchers working at 300 George Street, Suite 900, in New Haven, Connecticut, received appointments at the Yale Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine. Others have their primary appointments at other institutions, particularly the University of Connecticut. Although grants are formally transferred to Yale, research continues in the same space at 300 George, with the same equipment. Collaboration across multiple institutions continues.

More detailed information can be found here: Decades of Discovery.