Talk′ing-ma-chine′.
An acoustic instrument in which articulate differences of sound are produced.
Kempelen and
Willis gained celebrity in this line.
Wolfgang von Kempelen, the inventor of the so-called automaton chess-player, which was only an ingenious deception, contrived a talking head, which contained wind-tubes and vibrating reeds, the latter set in motion by a bellows in the bust.
The capacity of the machine was limited, but the following words and sentences were automatically enunciated without the intervention of a person to touch any keys:
opera; astronomy; Constantinople; vous êtes mon amie; Romanorum imperator; etc. Tubes to imitate nostrils produced “
m” and “
n” a funnel and a reed changed “
s” into “
z,” “
sch,” and “
j” . Parts of the mechanism imitated the movements and action of the mouth, lips, teeth, tongue, palate, glottis, lungs, etc.
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Tallow-can. |
Faber's machine gives the correct pronunciation of the letters and elementary sounds, and enunciates phrases of six or eight words in the
English, French, and German languages.
Air is forced by a bellows, through a narrow aperture, into an iron windpipe, and thence into an artificial glottis, from whence it passes through a vent representing the human mouth, with movable jaws and a rubber tongue.
Pipes and rubber tubes, operated by fourteen levers, are arranged to produce the various
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2484]
sounds.
The voice is shrill, monotonous, and unnatural, but in a majority of instances strikingly correct.
Laughter is caused by a separate lever.
