In 1928 a man called Paget gave some lectures here at the RI and we have his
original apparatus, which is here, exactly as he left it in which the whole of
voice sounds are imitated by purely mechanical means.
This is the lungs. They force air up through the windpipe.
This is the larynx; it's just an organ pipe reed.
[BABY SOUNDS]
Now babies of course start by making a noise something like that and then they
learn to manipulate their tongues and lips to make different noises see if
I can imitate some baby noises..
[BABY SOUNDS]
And as they practice making sounds and
speech better then they shape their mouths into specific shapes. For instance
this one is a tube exactly as made by Paget with two cavities representing the
positions before and behind the tongue. When you put that on and it should make
an "eh" sort of noise.
["EH" SOUNDS]
["BEH" SOUNDS]
I'm trying to say "baby" on it.
["BEH BEH" SOUNDS]
All by moving the tongue to
change the proportions of the two parts of the mouth we can get "ah".
Okay, "mama".
["MAH MAH" SOUNDS]
That is a simple voice synthesiser. These days, though, a voice synthesiser
can be made very much better by doing all those functions but doing them electronically.
Over here we have a good voice synthesiser..
and it has been trained in the first demonstration by having
phrases spoken at it by a real person, in a real voice, and those sounds have not
been recorded but they've been analysed so the instructions to a synthesiser have been stored.
Here is the first message spoken by a real person but stored only as instructions to a voice synthesiser.
[SYNTHESISER] "An apple a day keeps the doctor away".
A different person said..
[SYNTHESISER] "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".
And the lady's voice said..
[SYNTHESISER] "Sorry for the delay please wait for dial tone".
That last message gives you a clue that this demonstration has been provided
from the research labs of British Telecom.
[LAUGHTER]
In another demonstration, though, we can get this voice synthesiser
to read actual type. Could I have your name please?
[GIRL] Rachel Borer.
[PYE] Boyer?
[GIRL] Borer.
[PYE] Borer. Rachel Borer. Let's type that in and see how it gets on.
[SYNTHESISER] "Rah-chel Boh-rer".
[LAUGHTER]
Of course the English language is notoriously difficult to
spell and pronounce and this machine is now being fed just with letters of the
alphabet to see what it can make of it. What's your name please?
In the red.
[BOY] Richard Bartlett.
[PYE] Richard Bartlett. Let's try that.
[SYNTHESISER] "Richard Bartlett".
It did rather better at that. Let's try "Bill Coates" shall we?
[SYNTHESISER] "Bill Coh-ates".
[LAUGHTER]
It hasn't yet been taught that "oa" is pronounced "oh" so
it pronounces the "a" separately and calls it "Coh-ates".
It also has a message inside itself that it would like to give you if I...
ask it now to give its own message.
[SYNTHESISER] "Thank you for letting me speak at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures".
[LAUGHTER]