ANOTHER MARVEL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 362, 25 October 1932, Page 7

ANOTHER MARVEL

SCIENTISTS SUCCEED IN MAKING ARTIFICIAL VOICE. THE DUMB CAN SPEAK. Science has made a voice — a voice that is almost human — out of steel and rubbei'. This artificial larnyx enables men and women dumb through the removal of the larynx by op'eration, or people who have lost the use of their vocal cords by paralysis or throat trouble, to speak like ordinary men and women. A group of scientists and telephone experts, working in the laboratories of the Bell Telephone Company in New York have given humanity this hoon of articficial speech. It is the triumph of years of research and experiment. Hundreds of people are now talking in America by this jneans. Dne of the artificial larynxes has arrived in London, together with a sound film which demonstrates its wonders. The film is to be shown to English throat specialists. Mr. S. S. A. Watkins, one of the directors of the Western Electrie Company, showed the talkie to a Daily Express representative in a small underground theatre below Kingsway. The patient whose larnyx has been removed breath'es through a small opening made at the base of the throat. The artificial larynx is fitted to this opening. A breathing hole in th'e side of the sound-box enables the dumb man to inhale and exhale freely. Whenever he wishes to speak he blocks this opening with his thumb. This forces the exhaled air to strike a flexible reed causing it to vibrate like vocal cords. . The artificial larynx is no more unsightly than some of the artificial aids •to the deaf, and its operation is extremely simple. Mr. Watkins said that one of the possibilities of the artificial voice was jts extension to men and women who had never had the faculty of speech.