A TALKING MACHINE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1931, 3 May 1880, Page 3

A TALKING MACHINE.

A machine, with which a remarkably clobo imitation of human speech can be produced has been brought to England by the inventor, Herr Faber, and exhibited to the Physical Society and privately, for closer examination of its mechanism, to several well known scientific men. The "Times" remarks that it opens up an entirely different set of questions from those suggested by the performances of the phonograph, which merely reproduces sounds uttered by the human voice. This talking machine will give intelligible utterance, more or lesa distinot according to the woi da, to the ideas of the operator. The machine is the product of the continuous labor and study of two members of the same family. It was begun in 1815 by odo Joseph Faber, and so far elaborated in 1841 that it was exhibited in that year to the King of Bavaria. The originator dying, he bequeathed the machine to his nephew, the present owner, also named Joseph Faber, who had been associated with him in its construction, and since it became his property Herr Faber haa almost doubled its power of articulation. The chief points of interest the machine haa for the physicist, the physiologist, and, it may be added, for the philologist, lie in the rosults obtained from the ingenious contrivances by which the functiona of the flexible and mobile organa of voice are performed. The principal features of the machine are, to begin with, the bellows, from which the air ia driven with conaiderable but varying force by meana of a pedal lever. The air passes in a horizontal stream through a small chamber, which represents the human larynx, and in the same right line out through the mouth. The lips and tongue are of indiarubbor, and the lower jaw ia movable. Belosv tho laryngeal apparatus, and opening from tho chamber in which it is contained, is another smaller ohambor, about tho size and shape of a lemon, from which a pipe curved upwards allows the air when driven through to escape. This supplies the place of the noae to the instrument, and when a valve ia opened enables the sound of the lettora m and n to be produced by the striking oE the same keys with which the soundfc of b or p are obtained. The larynx is, of course, the most complex part of tho machine, and to Herr Fabor is duo tho elaboration of this portion of the mechanism. Within a amall oblong box, a narrow and exceedingly thin strip of hippopotamus bono strengthened by indiarubbor on one side, produces by its vibrations tho speaking tone, which may bo called the fundamental aound to bo subsequently modified. At the will of tho operator the pitch oan be raided or lowered,

but not during the utterance of a word, or sentence, so that in Baying " Mariana," or " Comment voua portez votis " (the machine talks French, German, Italian, or English), the key-note remains unaltered to the end.