ROBOT THAT TALKS

Evening Star, Issue 22913, 22 March 1938, Page 9

ROBOT THAT TALKS

SCIENTIST'S INVENTION Recently radio listeners tuned in on WJZ and heard: “ Oh, Lila, I love you ” and such words as “ Minnie,” “ upper,” “ rather,” “ father,” and ta-ta, says the science editor of the !‘ New York Times.’ It was Sir Richard Paget, in London, proving to the world _ the merits of a very simple mechanical talker which he invented more than 10 years ago, and which he was manipulating with a virtuosity that few could probably acquire. His work on speech is accepted the world over as fundamental.

Every scientifio_ begins with an inspiration. Sir Richard’s came from a cold which confined him to his bed. “ Disinclined to read,” he says, “ it occurred to me to try to listen to the whispered resonances of my own voice.” He listened so intently that he sickened. Gradually he acquired the ability to recognise each resonance. Whereupon he produced the first complete chart _of what a vowel sound really is. With the aid of models of throats made of plasticene, tubes of cardboard, clips, and the like, it became possible to reproduce all the sounds of human speech. After looking over the human-speak-ing apparatus, Sir concluded that it is essentially a musical instrumant comprising a bellows (the lungs), a vibrating reed (the vocal chords) which can be tuned within wide limits or put out of action altogether, and a resonating cavity (the mouth, throat, and nose) which can. be subdivided so as to produce in effect different combinations of cavities connected together. He built a talking machine. It consists only of a bellows operated by the feet, a rubber tube or wind pipe, and a larnyx with a reed. He the bellows with his foot and (forms <a> mouth with his hands. _ Just by cupping his hands into different shapes and thus changing the resonating cavity formed by them, he can make this simple apparatus utter words like “ Mamma ” and even a few simple sentences. * When we talk to each other we interpret not sounds, according to Sir Richard, but gestures of the mouth. Even if we cannot see the speaker we know just how he formed the words that we interpret. In his ‘ Expression of the Emotions,’ Charles Darwin pointed out that there is a natural sympathy of movement between the hands and the mouth, so that children learning to write twist their tongues as they move their fingers. Sometimes women catting cloth to a pattern move their jaws in unison with their hands. Even before Darwin, Dickens, in the ‘ Pickwick Papers,’ describes Sam Weller, jun., composing a valentine to Mary, the housemaid, and “ forming with his tongn’e imaginary characters to correspond.” Talking, then, is merely a sign language carried on with the lips and face. Like a true experimental scientist, Sir Richard has put his theory to the test. He fabricated words to symbolise such actions as “to dig,” “wave aloft,” “ shake,” “ stab.” “ scrape.” In other words, he made his tongue gesture. At the same time he grunted.

The sounds thus obtained were sub* mitted to Dr Neville Whymant, ad authority on primitive Polynesian, Melanesian, and Japanese •words. It turned out that about a dozen of the fabrications had Polynesian counter-* parts Thus Sir Richard’s word “ tadi ” or “ tari ” for “to dig,”* agreed with the Polynesian “ taxi.”* “ Wave aloft ” became “ ledhlledhl ”* in Sir. Richard’s language. In Poly-* nesian it is “ letelete.” Sir Richard’s object in life is not to improve talking motion pictures or phonographs, but human language and, speech. Hence his plea for a fuller[ understanding of their mechanism and origin. Once Sir Richard told a Royal In-*, stitution audience that ‘‘ culturally; considered, human speech is now at about the same level as agriculture; and horticulture were on this earth! twelve or fifteen thousand years ago, ( when man was still a food gatherer,; not a food cultivator, and hunted for wild growths.”