Word: humanity
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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This curious colloquy took place last week in Philadelphia's Franklin Institute, where engineers of Bell Telephone Laboratories and a trained operator demonstrated a complicated electronic device called Voder (short for "voice operation demonstrator"). Voder creates a variety of sounds resembling human speech closely enough to be easily intelligible. It is intended to flabbergast, enlighten and amuse visitors to this year's world's fairs in San Francisco and New York City...
...like a telephone receiver or loudspeaker. It originates speech at the touch of an operator, synthesizing sounds to form words. The men who built it were able to do so because in their telephone researches they had made a close study of how speech sounds are made by the human larynx, mouth, breath, tongue, teeth and lips. With electrical filters, attenuators, frequency changers, etc. they found that they could produce 23 basic sounds; that intelligible speech could be synthesized from various combinations of these sounds, controlled by a skilled operator manipulating a keyboard and foot pedal...
...machine's possible sound combinations are so various that Voder can imitate the inflections, overtones and shading of human diction. By altering pitch it can change from a man's voice to a woman's or a child's. It can mimic animal sounds, locomotive whistles, the noise of an airplane engine...
...EMPLOYMENT SHOWS DECLINE (WPA) . . . TEACHING TOLERANCE A MAJOR PROBLEM IN 1939 (Office of Education) . . . ELECTION SCHEDULED AT ARAGON-BALDWIN COTTON MILLS (NLRB) . . . IMPORTANCE OF RIBOFLAVIN IN HUMAN DIET (Public Health Service...
...sort of super-press bureau, the New Deal has its so-called National Emergency Council, headed by aggressive Lowell Mellett, ex-editor of the Washington News. NEC does some ticklish inside jobs: e.g., before Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black accepted a medal from the Southern Conference for Human Welfare last November, he phoned Low Mellett to ascertain if public reaction would be favorable. This week Congressman Bruce Barton, Manhattan adman who knows a pressagent when he sees one, introduced a bill to abolish the whole NEC, charging "Its distinguished membership is only a front for a band of 290 pressagents...