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The Speaking Machine of Wolfgang von Kempelen

1950; Acoustical Society of America; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1121/1.1906583

1520-9024

Homer Dudley, Thomas Tarnóczy,

Linguistics and language evolution

The physiological motions involved in speaking can be indicated to the eye or to the ear. For the eye suitably chosen symbols may be written to indicate the physiological positions assumed informing each sound; for the ear synthetic sounds may be produced by motions in a mechanism built to simulate the speech organs. The degree of phonetic success may be estimated in the case of the visible symbols by listening to sounds formed when the indicated physiological processes are carried out, and in the case of the speech-simulating mechanism by comparing the synthetic speech produced to normally spoken speech. Significant advances along both the visual and the aural lines are described from earliest times down to the present. Wolfgang von Kempelen produced the first speaking machine worthy of the name around 1780. This paper gives his background, a description of the apparatus he built, and a discussion of the methods used in producing the various sounds, fitting his work into the over-all picture of speech-imitating devices from the speaking of idols of ancient times down to the automatic electrical reconstructing of speech in the vocoder. For portraying to the eye the physiological characteristics of speech there are discussed the more outstanding methods from claimed symbolic alphabets of ancient languages down to the recent spectrographic visible speech.