The Speaking Machine of Wolfgang von Kempelen

Abstract

Wolfgang von Kempelen made significant contributions to the investigation of the human mechanism of speech production around 1770-90. During the preceding century there had been considerable speculation on various aspects of speech by linguists, teachers, physiologists and others. Kempelen became interested from the standpoint of the problem of the deaf-and-dumb. About this time also Professor Kratzenstein produced five vowel sounds synthetically with some degree of satisfaction. Kempelen who made a hobby of building intriguing mechanisms proceeded experimentally to set up mechanical equivalents of the parts of the human vocal system on a cut-and-try basis. He used a bellows for the lungs, a slit membrane for the glottis, a box with two variable cavities for the mouth and a set of controls for the various openings—lips, nostrils, and tongue-palate. With some use of one hand for resonance effects he fingered the keys to produce all the consonant and vowel sounds or approximations thereto. The quality was evidentally good enough for visiting observers to recognize a number of words, particularly Italian and French. Kempelen was thus the first to produce a complete synthetic speech mechanism which he described in detail in a book titled Mechanismus der Menschlichen Sprache nebst der Beschreibung seiner sprechenden Maschine published in 1791. For general interest the oral presentation will include other early speech-producing machines.