232 Mr. Willis on the Vowel Sounds, ♦ 



The abbe Mical (according to Rivarol)* made two colossal heads 

 which were capable of pronouncing entire sentences, but the 

 artist having destroyed them in a fit of disappointment at not 

 receiving his expected reward from the government, and having 

 left no trace of their construction, we are left completely in the 

 dark, as to the means employed by him to produce the different 

 sounds. He died about the year 1786. The only attempts which 

 have a claim to a scienti6c character, are those of Kratzenstein 

 and Kempelen ; these gentlemen were both occupied about the 

 jear 1770, in the mechanical imitation of the voice, and have 

 both in the most candid manner disclosed the means employed 

 by them, and the results of their experiments, the first in a 

 prize Essay presented to the Academy of Petersburgh in 1780 1, 

 the second in a separate treatise J. 



Kratzenstein 's attempts were limited to the production of 

 the vowels a, e, o, u, i, by means of a reed of a novel and 

 ingenious construction attached to certain pipes, some of them 

 of most grotesque and complicated figure, for which no reason 

 is offered, .save that experience had shewn these forms to be 

 the best adapted to the production of the sounds in question. 



Kempelen's treatise abounds with original and happy illus- 

 trations, and the author is no less remarkable for his ingenuity 

 and success, than for the very lively and amusing way in which 

 'he has treated his subject. None of these writers, however, 

 have succeeded in deducing any general principles. 



* Rivarol. Discours sur runiversalitt: de la langue Jraitfoise, Borgnis. Traiti des machines 

 imitatives, p. l6o. 



t The abstract of this Essay will be found in the Act. Acad. Petrop. for 1780, and the 

 whole Essay in the Journal de Physique, Vol. XXI. See also Young's Nat. Phil. I. p. 783. 



X Le Mecanisme de la parole suivi de la description d'une Machine parlante, par M. de 

 Kempelen. t'iame 1791- Dr. Darwin must also be reckoned among the mechanical imi- 

 tators of speech. See Darwin's Temple of Nature 1803, Note XI. 



