68 



Popular Science Monthly 



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01 5«y __OCl Sec 



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well as on experimentation, 

 back of which were the 

 resources of a great t\"pe- 

 writer company. 



The line of reasoning in- 

 volved in designing the 

 machine, though somewhat 

 intricate, is exceedingly in- 

 teresting. Getting any 

 machine at all to respond to 

 such an uncertain and vari- 

 able director as the human 

 voice, is a task beset with 

 difficulties. 



Speech Had First to Be 

 Studied 



In a recent paper which 

 he read before the American 

 Institute of Electrical En- 

 gineers, the inventor dis- 

 cussed researches lately 

 completed into the true 

 nature of speech, these 

 having a great deal to do 

 with the practical workings 

 of the eventual machine. 

 It was discovered that 

 all speech can be represented 

 by a sort of natural alphabet 

 of sound patterns, which, no matter 

 what the voice may be, always have the 

 same shape. When a man. for instance, 

 pronounces a given word he molds air 

 waves in precisely the same way as does 

 a woman. So far as sounds go, a Choctaw 

 Indian is as well provided as a Har\-ard 

 graduate; the onl\- difference is that the 

 sounds are grouped differently. This is a 

 fundamental law. The mechanism of 

 sf)eech is the same in all of us. Heretofore 

 physicists and workers with speech and 

 sound have been troubled by the fact 

 that they had nothing definite to work 

 with. The consonant letters, when one 

 person spoke them, would appear to 

 have much the same wave shape as 

 vowels enunciated by another speaker. 

 In fact, even consonants and vowels 

 produced by the same person sometimes 

 seemed to have these indeterminate 

 shapes when the scientists squinted at 

 them through their sound-wave record- 

 ing machines. Hence the task of ever 

 getting spoken sounds analyzed and 

 classified for study seemed hopeless. 

 Until these letter-sounds were analvzed 



SU&MAHIMi 



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After all, what are spoken 

 words but telegraph signals 

 sent through the air, collected 

 by the ear, and interpreted 

 by your brain? Consider 

 spoken words as sound signals 

 and the voice-operated type- 

 writer becomes possible 



Alphabet of natural leXter- 

 patierns obtained icith the ap- 

 paratus shown at top of page 66. 

 Xotg that the natural alphabet 

 is not unlike that now used in 

 submarine-cable telegraphy, 

 though of course the two alpha- 

 bets have no connection, theoret- 

 ical or otherwise. The machine 

 shcrwn on page 67 spells out 

 words in this natural alphabet. 



This phonetic writing may 

 some day be used in offices as a 

 sort of short-hand system, the 

 dictator talking into a machine 

 similar in principle to that 

 shown on page 67, and the 

 stenographer afterward reading 

 the wavy line from the roll of 

 paper as easily as she would her 

 own notes. The machine with 

 its present design is entirely in 

 laboratory form — interesting hcru:- 

 ever, for the novelty of the idea 

 cm -j:hich it is based, and because 

 it comes closest to tracing the 

 true wave-form of speech of any 

 machine yet devised. 



and classified so that somebody could 

 reason out the real underlying law they 

 obeyed, it was obviously impossible to go 

 go far toward a \oice-operated type- 

 writer. One cannot simply say "Write!" 

 to an inanimate collection of levers and 

 expect them to respond. 



Why Whispers Were Studied 



The instruments which were used in 

 determining the real nature of speech 

 sounds are shown on Page 66. With 

 this apparatus Mr. Flowers dealt only 

 in whispers. Why? Because whispering 

 is the most elemental way one can convey 

 speech. When you whisper you make 

 no use of the vocal cords or other com- 

 plicated mouth and throat mechanisms. 

 It may be said in passing that one of the 

 principal reasons previous workers with 

 speech sounds failed to get at true 

 sound-wave shapes was that over-tones 

 (extra tones that cause a given voice to 

 have its peculiar and distinctive nature) 

 caused the shape of the main tone or 

 fundamental to be obliterated. Res- 

 onant or echoing tones arising in the 



