Dr. Franklin Seaney Cooper, a pioneer in speech research whose work was later applied to computerized speech synthesis, died on Feb. 20 in Palo Alto, Calif., where he lived. He was 90 years old.

Much of his work was theoretical and seemed arcane. But in 1973, he served on a panel with five other experts who were asked to investigate the nature of the 18 1/2-minute gap in a tape made by President Richard M. Nixon in the Oval Office, which became a part of the Watergate investigation.

The rest of Dr. Cooper's career was mostly dedicated to less well-known research. Born and reared on a farm in Robinson, Ill., and educated at the University of Illinois, where he got his bachelor's degree, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D., Dr. Cooper first worked for General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y., as a research engineer, then left it in 1935 to join Caryl P. Haskins in founding the Haskins Laboratories.

At Haskins in the 1950's, he played an important role in developing an electromechanical machine to synthesize speech. He wanted to codify how speech was perceived and understood and how noise and distortion affected the understand of it.

He did extensive experimentation with speech patterns. His approach enabled Dr. Cooper and his colleagues to determine which elements in speech carried the information needed for understanding. He also analyzed how words were formed and the relationship between the gestures people make and phonetics.

During World War II, Dr. Cooper served under Vannevar Bush, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's science adviser, as head of the liaison office of the United States Government's Office of Scientific Research. His wartime service earned him a certificate of merit from President Harry S. Truman in 1948.

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He also served as a consultant to the United Nations on atomic power, and was involved in the post-war years in the effort to bring atomic energy under international control.

Dr. Cooper taught approaches to phonetics both at Columbia University and the University of Connecticut and maintained a research affiliation with Yale University. He was given an honorary doctorate by Yale and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

He married Frances E. Clem in 1935; she died in 1991. Among his survivors are two sons, Alan Kent Cooper of Palo Alto and Robert Craig Cooper of Amherst, Va.; four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

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