Suzanne L. Hanauer

Suzanne L. Hanauer is a programmer and researcher active in the formative years of digital sound and image research. In the 1960s, Bell Labs employed many women programmers who supported research in speech, vision, and computing. Recruited from mathematics and science programs, they translated experimental concepts into working code, collaborating closely with physicists, psychologists, and engineers. Hanauer was one of these women, working within the Visual and Acoustics Research area, where she developed procedures that linked computing with acoustics and image making, contributing to research in speech processing and computer-generated imagery.

With B. S. Atal, Hanauer co-authored Speech Analysis and Synthesis by Linear Prediction of the Speech Wave in 1971, a study that introduced a time-domain linear predictive coding method for analyzing and reconstructing speech. The approach offered an efficient model for representing the human voice at low bit rates, forming the basis for later work in digital speech transmission and synthesis. Around the same time, she programmed the Stromberg-Carlson S-C 4020 microfilm recorder on the GE-645 system for Manfred R. Schroeder’s Eye II / One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words from 1968, a computer-processed photograph in which each of 16,384 picture points was generated from the repeated phrase. Produced at Bell Labs and exhibited in Tendencies 4 in 1969, the work is now part of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, collection and reflects Hanauer’s role in developing the software that connected Bell Labs research in speech, perception, and early computer art.