SCIENTIFIC NEWS* £29 



Speaking Automaton or Machine. 



Mr. Robbrtson, whose name has frequently appeared in the 

 Annales cle Chimie, but Is better known to the public as an 

 aeronaut in Denmark, lias, it is said, contiiveda speaking figure, 

 which he exhibited a few months ago at Paris. ]t articulates 

 the words Papa, Manzma,and Five Napoleon, anddai'y improves 

 in power, from (as may be supposed) the practice of the person 

 who works it. 



. On this occasion I would remind some-of my readers, who 

 may have remembered the automaton chess player, which was 

 exhibited in St. James's Street, about thirty years ago by the 

 Baron Kempellen, — that that mechanic shewed, in a kind of 

 half private exhibition in his parlour, after the games at chess 

 were over, an instrument which spoke. I was present atone 

 of these performances The Baron said the machine was not 

 then completed. It was a kind of box which he brought out 

 and placed upon a table. Speaking without any memorandums 

 at so considerable a distance of time, I judge its dimensions to 

 have been about two feet in length, one foot wide, and eight or 

 nine inches deep. It had no lid j but we were prevented from 

 seeing the inside by a cloth which covered it. The Baron put 

 his hands into the box under the cloth, so that his right arm 

 was disposed longitudinally in the box, and seemed to pre^s a 

 pair of bellows : the other hand was put in, crosswise at the 

 end, near the place of the right-hand, and seemed to be employ- 

 ed with keys or some apparatus, or perhaps both hands may 

 have been so employed. When he caused the instrument to 

 speak, he raised his right elbow and gradually pressing it down, 

 the sound was heard. It was a clear monotonous sound as if 

 from a single pipe about the pitch of D,, above the middle C, 

 concert pitch ; and the words papa and mamma were uttered, 

 very distinctly in a slow drawlin? manner ; that is to say there 

 was a want of the usual modulation of speaking tones, and the 

 sound fell off in its intensity towards the end. After several 

 other words had been spoken, a lady asked in French if it 

 could not speak sentences, and the Baron asked what it should 

 say : she answered que se suis mechante, and the instrument said 

 vous etes mechante, mats vous etes aussi bonne. 



Kratzenstein 



