If you've listened to pop music in the past 40 years, you've probably heard more than a few songs with a robotic sound. That's thanks to the vocoder, a device invented by Bell Labs, the research ...

Back in 1992, the hyper-cool (and now defunct) British dance music magazine Melody Maker derided a single by French DJ duo Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo as "a bunch of daft punk." ...