Wolfgang von Kempelen's Speaking Machine (1769)
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
1. Mechanical simulation：
Kempelen's Speaking Machine garnered significant attention in its time because it was a mechanical device capable of mimicking human speech, which was considered a notable technological achievement in the 18th century. Although the technical principles of this machine significantly differ from modern speech synthesis technology, it served as an inspiration for subsequent research in speech synthesis and marked the early exploration of mechanical simulation of speech.[3]
2.Artificial Vocal Organ Simulation:
Kempelen's Speaking Machine included the simulation of human vocal cords, tongue, lips, and other sound-producing organs with mechanical components. While Kempelen was not the pioneer in this field, his Speaking Machine incorporated a more complex mechanical structure, which allowed for more precise simulations. Additionally, Kempelen's machine had the capability to control sound through mechanical devices, rather than merely passively imitating sounds. This was a significant technological achievement given the technological standards of the time.[4]
Impact
Von Kempelen's travail was not for naught and his impact far from nil.[5] Kempelen's speaking machine together with the book "Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache" ("Mechanism of Human Speech and Language") he published in 1791 in which he described his observations on human speech production and his experiments with his speaking machine had a profound and multifaceted impact on the fields of linguistics and speech synthesis, influencing both the development of new ideas in linguistic research and advancements in audio engineering.
1. Contributions to linguistic research
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.[6] In his book, he classifies the vowels according to her width of the lip channel giving a ranking of A >E>I>0>U and the width of the so called tongue channel that can be interpreted as horizontal tongue position. Although Kempelen isn't very explicit here, the observation clearly resembles the perceptual analysis of the second formant in whispered vowels described a century before by Reyher (1679; as cited in Kohler 2000; cf. Figure 12) and the vowel tunes of von Helmholtz (1862; cf. Figure 13). [7]This innovative vowel classification represented a novel approach to the study of speech sound physical properties.
2. Development of Speech Synthesis and Audio Engineering
Development of Speech Synthesis: Kempelen's research findings represented a crucial step in the development of speech synthesis. His insights into the resonating properties of the vocal tract and the impact of tube width on vowel production provided the foundational knowledge that subsequent researchers needed to simulate human speech mechanically.
Influence on Later Innovators: Later innovators built upon Kempelen's ideas, gained insights into resonating properties and developed theories of multiple resonance. In 1830, it was Willis, starting from the ideas of Kratzenstein and von Kempelen, who first gained resonable insight in the resonationg propgerties of neutral tubes that would be able to give the illusion of different vowels. And in 1838 Wheatstone who also rebuild Kempelen's machine added the theory of multiple resonance. [8] In about mid 1800's Charles Wheatstone constructed his famous version of von Kempelen's speaking machine. It was a bit more complicated and was capable to produce vowels and most of the consonant sounds. Some sound combinations and even full words were also possible to produce.[9]Inspirations in research and experiments with mechanical and semi-electrical analogs of vocal system in speech synthesis technologies were directly influenced by Kempelen's early work, making it a key milestone in the history of speech technology.
Future research
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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.
- ↑ Grassegger, H. (n.d.). Von Kempelen and the Physiology of Speech Production.[1]
- ↑ Trouvain, J., & Brackhane, F. (n.d.). THE RELEVANCE TODAY OF WOLFGANG VON KEMPELEN’S “SPEAKING MACHINE.” [2]
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Pompino-Marschall, Bernd. “Von Kempelen’s Contribution to the Theory of Acoustic Articulation,” n.d.
- ↑ Pompino-Marschall, Bernd. “Von Kempelen’s Contribution to the Theory of Acoustic Articulation,” n.d.
- ↑ http://research.spa.aalto.fi/publications/theses/lemmetty_mst/chap2.html
- ↑ 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. [3]