SCIENCE AND LAUGHTER

Hokitika Guardian, 9 February 1929, Page 7

SCIENCE AND LAUGHTER

HUMAN SPEECH AND MUSIC. LONDON, Dec. 20. Sir Richard Paget gave the learned folk wini assembled at the Royal Institution to listen to a scientific lecture a jolly fore-taste of Christnms-timc amusement. Rarely even when the lecture theatre is filled with children assembled frankly to hear scientific talk in the form of diversion does one hoar such merry laughter. Most venerable figures—the sprightly eighty-eiglil-year-old Sir James ChrichLon-Browne amongst them—gave themselves to hearty expressions of almost juvenile delight. Sir Richard’s topic was human speech as a musical phenomenon, and to illustrate his scholarly talk of vocal chords and the mouth in making sound, he called his daughter to assist him, and together they gave the “tune” • “Home Sweet Home,” Sir Richard whistling the bass and humming the alto and his daughter whistling the treble and humming the tenor. Then Sir Richard put in his mouth a rubber tube attached to a hollow glass. His purpose was to illustrate how the cavity of the mouth affects souiid. He submerged the glass in water, blew down the tube, and by varying the submersion of tin* glass played the air of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Using tin* same glass and employing his hand to vary the entry of air into its cavity, lie next played “The Last Rose of Summer.” Best of all was his success in making cylinders of pnlastieine “talk.” He used bellows to pump wind into the cylinders, and merely by pinchin gs of the plasticine compelled them to emit perfect word sounds. For one demonstration a couple of gramophones were employed. The first gave Sir Johnstone Forbes - Robertson's voice speaking. Hamlet’s instructions to the players. The next gave the same passage reversed, so that one heard the echo before the word. This was, indeed, a queer thing to listen to, and suggested a nightmare for linguists—the learning of English backwards.