Wolfgang von Kempelen's Speaking Machine (1769): Difference between revisions
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== Impact == | == Impact == | ||
Von Kempelen's travail was not for naught and his impact far from nil.<ref>Schroeder, Manfred R. “A Brief History of Synthetic Speech.” ''Speech Communication'' 13, no. 1–2 (October 1993): 231–37. [https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6393(93)90074-U. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6393(93)90074-U.]</ref> While before Von Kempelen the larynx was considered central to speech production, his simple and successful demonstration drew the attention of 19th-century scientists to the vocal tract, the cavity between the glottis and the lips, as the main site of acoustic articulation. In 1791, after 20 years of hard labor, Von Kempelen published a book in which he described his observations on human speech production and his experiments with his speaking machine (Von Kempelen, 1791).Unfortunately, for the ultimate fate of his speaking machine the clever count conceived and demonstrated a chess-playing machine at precisely the same time he worked on his talking contraption. But the widely exhibited chess "automaton" was anything but automatic: it concealed a midget chess-master in its innards who communicated magnetically with the above-board chessmen. While the shifty machine (actually the hidden midget) is said to have beaten even Napoleon - no slouch at chess - the uncovered deception cost Von Kempelen his hardwon credibility. People simply assumed that his speaking machine, too, was just another fraud, merely conveying the speech sounds of a hidden human. His early forays into synthetic speech stimulated much research into the physiology of speech production and experimental phonetics. | |||
== Future research == | == Future research == | ||
Revision as of 22:39, 14 October 2023
Gourp Member: Yinqiu Wang/ YanhuaLiao / Ziyun Zhang / CantaoSu/ ChenyuLi
Introduction
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Historical Context
In 1769, Hungarian nobleman Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen embarked on the development of a mechanical speaking machine reportedly capable of producing a diverse range of respectable speech sounds. After two decades of great efforts, Kempelen published a book in 1791 detailing his observations on human speech production and his experiments with the speaking machine.[1]
First Experiment
Kempelen's initial attempt at speaking machine involved basic components mimicking the human vocal tract. Using a kitchen bellows for airflow, a bagpipe reed as the glottis, and a clarinet bell as the mouth, he managed to produce simple vowel sounds. However, the setup lacked the necessary components for constructing most consonants, such as nasals, plosives, and fricatives. Kempelen later shifted from a single-reed design to a multiple-reed approach in his second experiment.
Second Experiment
The second design resembled a musical organ console, operated by keys representing different letters. Utilizing a common bellows and various shaped pipes, he succeeded in producing several vowels and consonants, including /p/ and /m/. However, the sounds did not blend together in a natural way and vowels in particular came on rather explosively, thus adding a k-like sound. [2] Thus, kempelen began work on his thrid design.
Third experiment
The third approach, resembling the first design, featured enhancements including a rubber mouth, a simulated "throat" with nasal cavities, and additional mechanisms for articulating specific consonants. Kempelen's machine achieved speech in multiple languages, although it struggled with pitch variation and monotone delivery. Despite certain mispronunciations, listeners often overlooked errors, viewing the machine's resonance akin to that of a young child. Nonetheless, the third design marked significant progress from Kempelen's dedicated twenty years study of the vocal tract and speech production.
Key Innovations
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Impact
Von Kempelen's travail was not for naught and his impact far from nil.[3] While before Von Kempelen the larynx was considered central to speech production, his simple and successful demonstration drew the attention of 19th-century scientists to the vocal tract, the cavity between the glottis and the lips, as the main site of acoustic articulation. In 1791, after 20 years of hard labor, Von Kempelen published a book in which he described his observations on human speech production and his experiments with his speaking machine (Von Kempelen, 1791).Unfortunately, for the ultimate fate of his speaking machine the clever count conceived and demonstrated a chess-playing machine at precisely the same time he worked on his talking contraption. But the widely exhibited chess "automaton" was anything but automatic: it concealed a midget chess-master in its innards who communicated magnetically with the above-board chessmen. While the shifty machine (actually the hidden midget) is said to have beaten even Napoleon - no slouch at chess - the uncovered deception cost Von Kempelen his hardwon credibility. People simply assumed that his speaking machine, too, was just another fraud, merely conveying the speech sounds of a hidden human. His early forays into synthetic speech stimulated much research into the physiology of speech production and experimental phonetics.
Future research
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. [4]
References
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- ↑ Schroeder M R. A brief history of synthetic speech[J]. Speech communication, 1993, 13(1-2): 231-237.
- ↑ Dudley H, Tarnoczy T H. The speaking machine of Wolfgang von Kempelen[J]. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1950, 22(2): 151-166.
- ↑ Schroeder, Manfred R. “A Brief History of Synthetic Speech.” Speech Communication 13, no. 1–2 (October 1993): 231–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6393(93)90074-U.
- ↑ Feng, S., Kudina, O., Halpern, B. M., & Scharenborg, O. (2021). Quantifying Bias in Automatic Speech Recognition (arXiv:2103.15122). arXiv. http://arxiv.org/abs/2103.15122
- ↑ Glantz, Richard "SHOEBOX: a personal file handling system for textual data." In Proceedings of the November 17-19, 1970, Fall Joint Computer Conference 1970. 535-545. [1]