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Article published In: Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 28:3 (2001) ► pp.289–330

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Phonetics and speaking machines

On the mechanical simulation of human speech in the 17th century

 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Published online: 13 June 2002
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.28.3.02fag
Summary
This paper shows that in the 17th century various attempts were made to build fully automatic speaking devices resembling those exhibited in the late 18th-century in France and Germany. Through the analysis of writings by well-known 17th-century scientists, and a document hitherto unknown in the history of phonetics and speech synthesis, an excerpt from La Science universelle (1667[1641]) of the French writer Charles Sorel (1599–1674), it is argued that engineers and scientists of the Baroque period have to be credited with the first model of multilingual text-to-speech synthesis engines using unlimited vocabulary.
Résumé
Cet article montre que la construction des automates parlants similaires à ceux présentés au public au XVIIIe siècle en France et en Allemagne fut tentée par plusieurs inventeurs un siècle auparavant. A travers l’analyse des extraits d’ouvrages scientifiques bien connus du dix-septième siècle et d’un document encore inconnu dans l’histoire de la phonétique et de la synthèse de la parole, un extrait de La Science universelle (1667[1641]) de l’écrivain français Charles Sorel (1599–1674), il est suggéré que l’invention de la synthèse vocale multilingue à vocabulaire illimité est due aux ingénieurs et aux scientifiques de l’Âge classique.
Zusammenfassung
Der vorliegende Aufsatz weist nach, daß im 17. Jahrhundert eine Reihe von Versuchen unternommen worden sind, eine automatische Sprechmaschine zu bauen, die solchen ähnelt, die in Frankreich und Deutschland im späten 18. Jahrhundert der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt wurden. Mithilfe der Analyse von Schriften bekannter Wissenschaftler des 17. Jahrhunderts sowie eines in der Geschichte der Phonetik und Sprachsynthese bisher nicht bekannten Dokuments, einem Auszug aus La Science universelle (1667[1641]) des französischen Autors Charles Sorel (1599–1674), wird die These untermauert, daß Ingenieuren und Forschern der Barockzeit das Verdienst zukommt, als erste Modelle von multilingualen, synthetischen Sprechmaschinen entwickelt zu haben, die ein unbegrenztes Vokabular verwendeten.
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