HOPE FOR THE STONE DEAF

Grey River Argus, 5 April 1948, Page 2

HOPE FOR THE STONE DEAF

What Braille is to the blind, spectrograms may become to the deaf. This is the possibility which arises from the experimental use of speech patterns on a television screen in a test this week in which, a stone deaf man telenhoned his wife. He could not hear' a word she said—but lie was able to read her speech from electronic patterns on the screen before him. . Her speech did not appear as print or script, but as a series of luminous designs—spurts and splashes of light, each denoting a particular sound or intonation. All that was necessary m the experiment was for the man’s wife to speak clearly and deliberately. Otherwise it was a normal two-way conversation. Each sound we utter has its own distinctive and easily-recognised pattern when it is converted and then ‘played’ on a television) screen. A deaf man who’ becomes an expert in the use of the apparatus, can not only ‘see’ a conversation, but easily distinguish between different voices, which are as characteristic as handdeVice can train, the deaf to get normal expression into their voices. Many deaf people, who cannot hear themselves, often/talk very softly, or in a- fiat, uninteresting monotone. " With visible sound they will be able to see their own voices, compare its patterns with those of their tutor’s voice, and so improve their elocution.

Strangely enough, the device was foreshadowed by Walt Disney,, in his experimental cartoon “Fantasia” In the second section of the film, he portrayed the sounds of the instruments of the orchestra in terms of light and colour patterns on the screen. Some of the patterns now seen in the screen device are very similar. .