SHALL WE SPEAK BACKWARDS.

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 11, 12 July 1930, Page 29

SHALL WE SPEAK BACKWARDS.

Discussion. is proceeding in London whether modern existence will ultimately bo so "speeded up" that the spoken word will reach tho listener backwards. The theory is that if tho speed of a motor-ear could be mado to exceed that of sound, a listener towards whom the motor-car was moving would hear tho end of sentences spoken in the car before he heard the beginning.

Practical illustration of what these would be like was given at the Western Electric Studio in London last week, when a talkie film was reeled off in reverse direction and so great was the public interest that more than 2000 people attended the free demonstrations which continued most of the morning and afternoon in the company's private hall. Many more wove turned away

owing to the impossibility of accommodating thorn. Some of thoso present (says the London correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor") found that the spoken -words wore utterly unrecognisable, and sounded like a foreign tongue. The actors appeared upsido down, and an Alice "Through the Looking Glass" effect was produced by the fact that their actions all happened before the speech which they illustrated. Thus a bow with which two pianistß ended their performance began at the bottom, then tho figures straightened themselves, walked backwards to their I chairs, sat clown at their instruments, and played notes which, instead of being sharply defined as in ordinary piis.uo playing, sounded like the sustained tones of an organ.