"Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)" is a song written in 1892 by British songwriter Harry Dacre with the well-known chorus "Daisy, Daisy / Give me your answer, do. / I'm half crazy / all for the love of you", ending with the words "a bicycle built for two". The song is said to have been inspired by Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, one of the many mistresses of King Edward VII. It is the earliest song sung using computer speech synthesis by the IBM 7094 in 1961, a feat that was referenced in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Daisy Bell
Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick
Frances Evelyn "Daisy" Greville, Countess of Warwick was a British socialite and philanthropist. Although embedded in late-Victorian British high society, she was also a campaigning socialist, supporting many schemes to aid the less well-off in education, housing, employment, and pay, and was often known as the "Red Countess". She established colleges for the education of women in agriculture and market gardening, first in Reading, then in Studley. She established a needlework school and employment scheme in Essex as well as using her ancestral homes to host events and schemes for the benefit of her tenants and workers. Greville was a long-term confidant or mistress to the Prince of Wales, who later became King Edward VII.
Daisy Greville, 1899
Frances Evelyn 'Daisy' Greville, Countess of Warwick, and her son Maynard Greville (1898-1960), by John Singer Sargent (1905)
Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, Lafayette Studio, 1897
Daisy, Countess of Warwick, from Bystander magazine, October 1905