1
00:00:03,040 --> 00:00:07,000
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

2
00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:14,520
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

3
00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:18,000
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,

4
00:00:18,040 --> 00:00:21,480
Speaker 3: and today we're going to be talking about some early

5
00:00:22,120 --> 00:00:26,000
Speaker 3: voice synthesis machines. Rob I actually got interested in this

6
00:00:26,120 --> 00:00:30,560
Speaker 3: topic because last week, when we were watching the Weird

7
00:00:30,560 --> 00:00:33,680
Speaker 3: House Cinema movie The Black Hole, I was thinking about

8
00:00:33,840 --> 00:00:36,879
Speaker 3: Roddy McDowell's voice when he's doing a voice for the

9
00:00:36,960 --> 00:00:40,280
Speaker 3: robot character who shares a lot of proverbs with the

10
00:00:40,360 --> 00:00:44,360
Speaker 3: human characters. And I kept listening to his line delivery

11
00:00:44,400 --> 00:00:47,159
Speaker 3: and I couldn't decide if he was trying to do

12
00:00:47,320 --> 00:00:50,360
Speaker 3: quote robot voice or not. He seemed to kind of

13
00:00:50,360 --> 00:00:51,559
Speaker 3: dip in and out of it. You know what I

14
00:00:51,600 --> 00:00:54,200
Speaker 3: mean When I say robot voice, where a character's playing

15
00:00:54,240 --> 00:00:57,640
Speaker 3: a robot and they say things like this, Well.

16
00:00:57,440 --> 00:00:59,600
Speaker 2: Of course I know what you are talking about, Joe.

17
00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:03,760
Speaker 3: I got kind of interested in the history of robot voice.

18
00:01:03,840 --> 00:01:06,440
Speaker 3: I was like, where does that come from? And I

19
00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:08,160
Speaker 3: was digging around a little. I'm sure there is a

20
00:01:08,160 --> 00:01:10,800
Speaker 3: good answer on that, but I don't know. My short

21
00:01:10,800 --> 00:01:14,120
Speaker 3: search didn't really turn up anything interesting, but it did

22
00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:18,160
Speaker 3: lead me indirectly to what we're talking about today, which is,

23
00:01:18,280 --> 00:01:23,280
Speaker 3: of course, we have the voice synthesis systems that are

24
00:01:23,400 --> 00:01:26,080
Speaker 3: largely digital today. Before that you had a lot of

25
00:01:26,520 --> 00:01:32,319
Speaker 3: electrical and electro mechanical systems for synthesizing human voices. But

26
00:01:32,400 --> 00:01:35,039
Speaker 3: actually there is an even earlier generation, which are the

27
00:01:35,200 --> 00:01:40,600
Speaker 3: purely mechanical voice synthesizers before electricity even came into the picture.

28
00:01:40,959 --> 00:01:44,440
Speaker 3: And that is what really stole my heart, especially one

29
00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:46,760
Speaker 3: particular machine of this type that I'm going to talk

30
00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:48,560
Speaker 3: about in the second half of this episode.

31
00:01:48,560 --> 00:01:51,720
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, this is a fascinating topic, in part

32
00:01:51,800 --> 00:01:54,280
Speaker 2: because look at it. Look at where we are now, right,

33
00:01:54,320 --> 00:01:57,360
Speaker 2: it's easy today in our Internet age for just the

34
00:01:57,400 --> 00:02:01,120
Speaker 2: average Internet user to engage with their as chat bots

35
00:02:01,160 --> 00:02:05,920
Speaker 2: and generative AI, text to speech and so forth. And

36
00:02:05,960 --> 00:02:09,640
Speaker 2: you know, so we're able to interact with an artifact,

37
00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:12,400
Speaker 2: a thing that reflects human will, that has been designed

38
00:02:12,440 --> 00:02:15,440
Speaker 2: to do key and telling things that have long been

39
00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:19,680
Speaker 2: the hallmarks of human activity, artistic generation, creative writing and

40
00:02:19,840 --> 00:02:24,600
Speaker 2: conversation or especially speech. And of course it's you know,

41
00:02:24,600 --> 00:02:27,520
Speaker 2: it's easy nowadays to do that, right, to transform into

42
00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:31,640
Speaker 2: audible or even video content. What is either written by

43
00:02:31,720 --> 00:02:34,520
Speaker 2: human or or created with some sort of a chat

44
00:02:34,720 --> 00:02:39,160
Speaker 2: bot machine, and the results may be amusing, that may

45
00:02:39,480 --> 00:02:42,280
Speaker 2: may be disastrous. But we're in this age where the

46
00:02:42,320 --> 00:02:45,240
Speaker 2: idea of the machine speaking is not in and of

47
00:02:45,280 --> 00:02:49,240
Speaker 2: itself groundbreaking, or at least if it is groundbreaking, or

48
00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:53,600
Speaker 2: if it's amazing, it's it's that it's a lower level

49
00:02:53,600 --> 00:02:55,720
Speaker 2: of amazement compared to previous ages.

50
00:02:56,320 --> 00:02:59,040
Speaker 3: Well, as you say, it's very integrated into modern technology.

51
00:02:59,080 --> 00:03:02,040
Speaker 3: So there's you know, Series and Alexa, all these like

52
00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:06,080
Speaker 3: home devices that speak, GPS devices for the car, you know,

53
00:03:06,160 --> 00:03:09,040
Speaker 3: that speak to you, but almost all of them are

54
00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:11,880
Speaker 3: still the subject of amusement if you actually pay attention

55
00:03:11,919 --> 00:03:14,880
Speaker 3: to what the voice sounds like, you know, like reading

56
00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:17,400
Speaker 3: emotions into the voice that's telling you what to do

57
00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:20,480
Speaker 3: as you're driving. That always makes me laugh because it

58
00:03:20,520 --> 00:03:21,960
Speaker 3: always seems a little bit annoyed.

59
00:03:22,680 --> 00:03:25,919
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what's Series whole deal that sort of thing, right?

60
00:03:27,760 --> 00:03:30,280
Speaker 2: You know. The other interesting angle on all this is

61
00:03:30,320 --> 00:03:35,560
Speaker 2: that are modern technological advancements here, or even some of

62
00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:38,720
Speaker 2: the historic technological advancements like they are kind of the

63
00:03:38,760 --> 00:03:42,960
Speaker 2: echo of a more ancient longing for this sort of thing.

64
00:03:43,720 --> 00:03:47,880
Speaker 2: It connects to something that's just fascinated us for a

65
00:03:47,920 --> 00:03:52,440
Speaker 2: long time, the idea generally of non human entities engaging

66
00:03:52,480 --> 00:03:55,040
Speaker 2: in speech, and you could you could do absolutely wild

67
00:03:55,120 --> 00:03:59,280
Speaker 2: chasing down the various divisions of this right, the various myths, legends,

68
00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:04,920
Speaker 2: and traditions concerning the speech of animals, plants, inorganic materials,

69
00:04:04,960 --> 00:04:10,800
Speaker 2: supernatural entities. You know, voices seemingly internal but also external

70
00:04:11,000 --> 00:04:12,520
Speaker 2: to our individual experience.

71
00:04:12,960 --> 00:04:15,120
Speaker 3: Though I would say there is an interesting thing about

72
00:04:15,360 --> 00:04:19,680
Speaker 3: machines or human or automata or human artifacts in general,

73
00:04:20,000 --> 00:04:24,520
Speaker 3: when compared to imagining an animal speak or any other

74
00:04:24,839 --> 00:04:27,680
Speaker 3: usually not speaking things starting to speak, which is, if

75
00:04:27,680 --> 00:04:30,360
Speaker 3: you're talking about a machine that does it, that means

76
00:04:30,520 --> 00:04:33,440
Speaker 3: somebody has to make that machine, and somebody has to

77
00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:36,120
Speaker 3: work that machine. And it kind of reminds me of

78
00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:39,520
Speaker 3: the idea of grammar in language. You know. The interesting

79
00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:42,640
Speaker 3: thing about grammar is that when we use language, we

80
00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:45,880
Speaker 3: all use grammar, so we have an intuitive grasp of

81
00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:49,320
Speaker 3: the rules of grammar. But without serious study, people can't

82
00:04:49,320 --> 00:04:51,560
Speaker 3: actually tell you what those rules are. And so, like

83
00:04:51,600 --> 00:04:53,599
Speaker 3: you know, that had to be in a sense a

84
00:04:53,880 --> 00:04:57,479
Speaker 3: science to back engineer the rules of grammar that we

85
00:04:57,600 --> 00:05:01,280
Speaker 3: use intuitively to like make them systematic and you know,

86
00:05:01,360 --> 00:05:04,599
Speaker 3: actually discover what those rules are the same thing could

87
00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:08,480
Speaker 3: be said about the phonetic rules that produce the intelligible speech.

88
00:05:08,839 --> 00:05:11,400
Speaker 3: We can all do it if we can speak, but

89
00:05:11,680 --> 00:05:16,720
Speaker 3: we don't necessarily understand what the individual physical properties of

90
00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:19,800
Speaker 3: a word are, and so we wouldn't necessarily know how

91
00:05:19,839 --> 00:05:22,359
Speaker 3: to make that same word come out of a machine.

92
00:05:23,160 --> 00:05:25,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are all these things that you have to

93
00:05:25,160 --> 00:05:28,800
Speaker 2: deconstruct before you can attempt to reproduce it artificially. And

94
00:05:28,839 --> 00:05:32,000
Speaker 2: we see that time and time again with in robotics,

95
00:05:32,000 --> 00:05:35,560
Speaker 2: for example. You know, things that we take for granted

96
00:05:35,880 --> 00:05:39,600
Speaker 2: concerning human movement, just about anything else you can imagine,

97
00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:42,200
Speaker 2: it becomes so much more difficult to try and reproduce

98
00:05:42,200 --> 00:05:45,039
Speaker 2: that you've got to understand what it actually is on

99
00:05:45,080 --> 00:05:46,599
Speaker 2: an entirely new level. First.

100
00:05:47,279 --> 00:05:50,279
Speaker 3: Now, I am to understand that before anybody actually made

101
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:53,719
Speaker 3: a machine that could approximate or synthesize a human voice

102
00:05:53,760 --> 00:05:57,320
Speaker 3: and produce intelligible speech, people were thinking about this as

103
00:05:57,320 --> 00:05:58,080
Speaker 3: a concept.

104
00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:01,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is not surprising, you know, this is uh,

105
00:06:01,960 --> 00:06:05,520
Speaker 2: this is kind of the the the meat of science fiction.

106
00:06:05,680 --> 00:06:07,400
Speaker 2: Right before we can do it, we dream of it.

107
00:06:07,960 --> 00:06:11,680
Speaker 2: One way or another, no matter what our exact grasp

108
00:06:11,720 --> 00:06:14,600
Speaker 2: of science happens to be. It always reminds me of

109
00:06:14,640 --> 00:06:19,840
Speaker 2: that line in William Gibson's Neuromancer where the character has

110
00:06:19,880 --> 00:06:22,880
Speaker 2: made a deal, a pact with a powerful ai and

111
00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:24,960
Speaker 2: it's pointed out like, this is the sort of thing

112
00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:28,520
Speaker 2: that in you know, centuries ago, people only dreamed of

113
00:06:28,640 --> 00:06:31,520
Speaker 2: making a deal with a devil, and now we've made

114
00:06:31,560 --> 00:06:37,840
Speaker 2: it possible through our ingenuity and invention. Congratulations, yeah, so

115
00:06:37,839 --> 00:06:41,680
Speaker 2: so yeah. Narrowing down here into generally the realm of

116
00:06:43,360 --> 00:06:49,919
Speaker 2: alleged human creations that through at least partial technology, but

117
00:06:50,080 --> 00:06:53,520
Speaker 2: also sometimes wizardry and alchemy and other things that are

118
00:06:53,600 --> 00:06:56,520
Speaker 2: kind of like you know, bunched in there together with

119
00:06:56,520 --> 00:07:00,880
Speaker 2: with actual technology to create some sort of a device

120
00:07:01,000 --> 00:07:03,440
Speaker 2: capable of speech. And then there are some also some

121
00:07:03,520 --> 00:07:05,719
Speaker 2: related things that are tied in there as well, and

122
00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:08,040
Speaker 2: a lot of it comes down to the idea of

123
00:07:08,440 --> 00:07:12,440
Speaker 2: a head, an artificial head that speaks.

124
00:07:13,080 --> 00:07:16,400
Speaker 3: I found something so loaded and revealing about that. As

125
00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:19,360
Speaker 3: a fact, the history of these machines, so many of

126
00:07:19,400 --> 00:07:23,600
Speaker 3: them had, whether real or imagined, these machines, so many

127
00:07:23,640 --> 00:07:27,480
Speaker 3: of them early on had heads or faces, so like

128
00:07:27,520 --> 00:07:30,000
Speaker 3: it wouldn't just be a speaker like you would have today.

129
00:07:30,080 --> 00:07:33,080
Speaker 3: That's you know, it's just a mechanical device for making

130
00:07:33,120 --> 00:07:36,120
Speaker 3: the sound. It's like that the presence of a head

131
00:07:36,240 --> 00:07:39,840
Speaker 3: or a face was considered important or at least desirable.

132
00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:42,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I wondered to what extent part of it

133
00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:46,560
Speaker 2: is just an echo of these earlier ideas. So going

134
00:07:46,720 --> 00:07:50,280
Speaker 2: to run through a few of these here. One of

135
00:07:50,320 --> 00:07:53,920
Speaker 2: the most famous, mainly from a literary tradition, as we'll

136
00:07:54,080 --> 00:07:57,560
Speaker 2: discuss here, is the idea of the brazen head. And

137
00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:00,080
Speaker 2: ultimately I guess there's more than one brazen head. We

138
00:08:00,120 --> 00:08:05,320
Speaker 2: can say brazen heads artificial heads that could speak. There's

139
00:08:05,360 --> 00:08:08,960
Speaker 2: a basically a lot of these stories concerned thirteenth century

140
00:08:09,000 --> 00:08:13,160
Speaker 2: English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon, who's come up

141
00:08:13,160 --> 00:08:16,920
Speaker 2: on the show before, though this particular version of the

142
00:08:16,920 --> 00:08:20,000
Speaker 2: story doesn't seem to emerge until the sixteenth century, and

143
00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:23,240
Speaker 2: it does so within the works of contemporary drama.

144
00:08:23,760 --> 00:08:25,960
Speaker 3: I think we talked about Roger Bacon at length in

145
00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:28,960
Speaker 3: an episode we did about the invention of fireworks, which

146
00:08:29,560 --> 00:08:31,920
Speaker 3: may come back and feature again in the feed soon.

147
00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:34,559
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I believe you're right, Yeah, I think Bacon

148
00:08:34,559 --> 00:08:37,800
Speaker 2: did come up in that he had a reputation as

149
00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:41,559
Speaker 2: not only a very learned man in both natural philosophy

150
00:08:41,559 --> 00:08:44,920
Speaker 2: and theology, and I should drive home definitely existed. I

151
00:08:44,920 --> 00:08:47,160
Speaker 2: don't think there's any doubt that there was a Roger Bacon.

152
00:08:47,640 --> 00:08:49,880
Speaker 2: But then there are all these other stories that he

153
00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:54,439
Speaker 2: was also potentially a wizard who was capable of producing

154
00:08:54,559 --> 00:09:00,480
Speaker 2: fabulous automata, either through amazing feats of clockwork engineuity that

155
00:09:00,520 --> 00:09:03,760
Speaker 2: I think would many would say was ultimately, you know,

156
00:09:04,240 --> 00:09:08,840
Speaker 2: impossible during his time period, or failing that he was

157
00:09:08,880 --> 00:09:11,920
Speaker 2: into alchemy and of course dark dank necromancy.

158
00:09:12,520 --> 00:09:14,600
Speaker 3: I think the way I conceive of Roger Bacon is

159
00:09:14,600 --> 00:09:17,920
Speaker 3: that he of course was a real figure. He was

160
00:09:18,679 --> 00:09:23,080
Speaker 3: of great intellectual note and significance, but much about his

161
00:09:23,200 --> 00:09:26,880
Speaker 3: sort of general reputation is kind of legendary, if that

162
00:09:26,880 --> 00:09:28,400
Speaker 3: makes sense. I mean, there are many things we know

163
00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:32,160
Speaker 3: about him that are true, but there's also just sort

164
00:09:32,160 --> 00:09:34,720
Speaker 3: of an aura or a vibe about him that is

165
00:09:34,760 --> 00:09:36,160
Speaker 3: not really based in reality.

166
00:09:36,840 --> 00:09:39,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he becomes a character in literature, especially

167
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:42,800
Speaker 2: in these accounts, so you can sort of look at

168
00:09:42,800 --> 00:09:46,199
Speaker 2: the different phases like historic individual ideas and you know,

169
00:09:46,760 --> 00:09:51,040
Speaker 2: misunderstandings have said real life individual and then eventually that

170
00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:53,920
Speaker 2: echoes into the fictional version of the person.

171
00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:55,960
Speaker 3: Which that's the more like wizard version.

172
00:09:56,720 --> 00:09:59,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And so there are a few different examples

173
00:09:59,400 --> 00:10:01,760
Speaker 2: of this. This is like a popular motif for a while.

174
00:10:02,160 --> 00:10:06,040
Speaker 2: There's a sixteenth century prose romance titled the Famous History

175
00:10:06,040 --> 00:10:08,520
Speaker 2: of Friar Bacon, and it tells of Bacon trying to

176
00:10:08,960 --> 00:10:11,480
Speaker 2: give a replica of a human head speech and having

177
00:10:11,520 --> 00:10:15,360
Speaker 2: to call in the devil for help. Cool. Other versions

178
00:10:15,360 --> 00:10:17,520
Speaker 2: of this tale describe it as an artificial head given

179
00:10:17,600 --> 00:10:21,480
Speaker 2: life by demons, which was capable of spontaneous speech and

180
00:10:21,559 --> 00:10:23,199
Speaker 2: of course telling the future.

181
00:10:24,600 --> 00:10:26,400
Speaker 3: I mean, what else would you tell?

182
00:10:26,480 --> 00:10:31,400
Speaker 2: Right right? Robert Greene's sixteen thirty play Friar Bacon and

183
00:10:31,440 --> 00:10:36,920
Speaker 2: Friar Bungay mentions this several times, citing quote Bacon's necromantic

184
00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:41,880
Speaker 2: skill and heads of Brass that quote can utter any voice.

185
00:10:42,200 --> 00:10:44,560
Speaker 2: The idea that's exploring both of these works is that

186
00:10:44,600 --> 00:10:47,520
Speaker 2: Bacon wished to build a wall of brass around Britain

187
00:10:47,800 --> 00:10:51,280
Speaker 2: with the help of the Brazen Head. He fails and

188
00:10:51,320 --> 00:10:52,199
Speaker 2: the head explodes.

189
00:10:54,640 --> 00:10:56,480
Speaker 3: Why have I never heard this? Site? It as like

190
00:10:56,520 --> 00:10:58,199
Speaker 3: an early science fiction tale.

191
00:10:58,679 --> 00:11:00,720
Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm probably not doing do diligence on

192
00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:03,640
Speaker 2: exactly what happens and everything at It's like saying, well,

193
00:11:03,640 --> 00:11:06,319
Speaker 2: in Star Wars, the bad guys make one planet to

194
00:11:06,320 --> 00:11:08,520
Speaker 2: blow up another planet, and then the planet they may

195
00:11:08,559 --> 00:11:11,360
Speaker 2: blows up. You know, That's that's really skipping over a

196
00:11:11,360 --> 00:11:13,640
Speaker 2: lot of the nuance. And so I think there's there's

197
00:11:13,679 --> 00:11:15,839
Speaker 2: inevitably more nuance here, but I just I didn't get

198
00:11:15,840 --> 00:11:19,840
Speaker 2: into it. Okay, So this idea of the satanic brasshead

199
00:11:19,880 --> 00:11:23,040
Speaker 2: of Roger Bacon persists despite the fact that there's no

200
00:11:23,080 --> 00:11:27,040
Speaker 2: indication that anything like this even created purely through technology

201
00:11:27,120 --> 00:11:30,760
Speaker 2: and not satanic wizardry was part of Bacon's world. He

202
00:11:30,840 --> 00:11:35,320
Speaker 2: was interested in optics and certainly various instruments scientific instruments

203
00:11:35,320 --> 00:11:37,240
Speaker 2: of brass of the day, but there's no indication that

204
00:11:37,280 --> 00:11:39,679
Speaker 2: he ever built an artificial head and tried to get

205
00:11:39,720 --> 00:11:40,320
Speaker 2: it to speak.

206
00:11:40,640 --> 00:11:42,880
Speaker 3: Okay, so this is part of the wizard aura, not

207
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:44,920
Speaker 3: part of his biography.

208
00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:47,600
Speaker 2: Right though, you know, we have to drive home to

209
00:11:47,840 --> 00:11:51,200
Speaker 2: is it possible that Roger Bacon as a hobby did

210
00:11:51,200 --> 00:11:53,120
Speaker 2: what he could to create you know, I mean, it's

211
00:11:53,160 --> 00:11:55,760
Speaker 2: possible it's not, you know, I don't think he would

212
00:11:55,760 --> 00:11:58,040
Speaker 2: have gotten to speak. But there are various sort of

213
00:11:58,360 --> 00:12:00,880
Speaker 2: ways you could interpret this as having some basis in

214
00:12:00,960 --> 00:12:06,040
Speaker 2: reality that doesn't involve magic or super science of the day. Okay, now,

215
00:12:06,240 --> 00:12:08,600
Speaker 2: I went to my bookshelf and I pulled off my

216
00:12:08,679 --> 00:12:12,240
Speaker 2: dusty copy of Brewers Dictionary Phrase and fable and provides

217
00:12:12,280 --> 00:12:15,360
Speaker 2: a little more insight on the legend quote. It was

218
00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:18,520
Speaker 2: said if Bacon heard it speak, he would succeed in

219
00:12:18,559 --> 00:12:22,720
Speaker 2: his projects, if not, he would fail. His familiar Miles

220
00:12:22,840 --> 00:12:25,560
Speaker 2: was set to watch, and while Bacon slept, the head

221
00:12:25,640 --> 00:12:29,960
Speaker 2: spoke thrice. Time is half an hour later, it said

222
00:12:30,320 --> 00:12:34,440
Speaker 2: time was in another half hour, it said times past

223
00:12:34,880 --> 00:12:35,640
Speaker 2: fell down.

224
00:12:35,440 --> 00:12:39,199
Speaker 3: And was broken to atoms to atoms to atoms. Yes,

225
00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:43,720
Speaker 3: surely Adams means something different here, Adams right when discovered

226
00:12:43,760 --> 00:12:46,200
Speaker 3: at the time, I think it just means like small

227
00:12:46,240 --> 00:12:47,080
Speaker 3: parts or something.

228
00:12:47,200 --> 00:12:49,839
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, yeah, that.

229
00:12:49,760 --> 00:12:52,559
Speaker 3: Would be hilarious if it was literally broken to atoms.

230
00:12:53,160 --> 00:12:54,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I don't know if it works, though. It

231
00:12:54,960 --> 00:12:57,280
Speaker 2: sounds like it's kind of an alarm clock that explodes.

232
00:12:57,679 --> 00:13:01,160
Speaker 3: Well, but I don't understand the difference between time was

233
00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:03,960
Speaker 3: and time's passed. They're both past tens.

234
00:13:04,480 --> 00:13:08,280
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's a good point. Time is time was, Time's past.

235
00:13:08,360 --> 00:13:11,120
Speaker 2: It seems like you would want the president there somewhere.

236
00:13:11,160 --> 00:13:15,920
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's that's what it allegedly said. And you'll

237
00:13:15,920 --> 00:13:21,160
Speaker 2: you'll find woodcuts that have this this motif on them

238
00:13:21,160 --> 00:13:23,000
Speaker 2: as well.

239
00:13:22,200 --> 00:13:24,320
Speaker 3: Like it would make more sense if it said the

240
00:13:24,360 --> 00:13:27,560
Speaker 3: three things where time will be, time is, time was,

241
00:13:28,480 --> 00:13:31,000
Speaker 3: but this seems more like time is, time was, time

242
00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:31,719
Speaker 3: was was.

243
00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:36,880
Speaker 2: Now. Brewers notes that reference to the references to the

244
00:13:36,920 --> 00:13:40,400
Speaker 2: brazen head are just common in literature, appearing frequently in

245
00:13:40,480 --> 00:13:45,640
Speaker 2: early romances but with Eastern origins, though it doesn't get

246
00:13:45,679 --> 00:13:48,720
Speaker 2: into that a lot elsewhere in the volume. It's also

247
00:13:48,880 --> 00:13:54,600
Speaker 2: noted that artificial heads that speak occur elsewhere as well.

248
00:13:54,640 --> 00:13:56,520
Speaker 2: And some of these are brazen heads, and some of

249
00:13:56,520 --> 00:13:58,240
Speaker 2: these are other things, but they're kind of I think

250
00:13:58,240 --> 00:14:01,040
Speaker 2: it's important to run through brief some of these examples

251
00:14:01,040 --> 00:14:03,640
Speaker 2: because they kind of paint a picture of not only

252
00:14:03,679 --> 00:14:07,160
Speaker 2: some of these other ideas of artificial heads speaking and

253
00:14:07,200 --> 00:14:14,800
Speaker 2: telling the future, but related non technological non artifacts that

254
00:14:15,200 --> 00:14:20,520
Speaker 2: kind of help inform what we think technology can do. Okay, okay,

255
00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:22,520
Speaker 2: so one of them is a brazen head in the

256
00:14:22,560 --> 00:14:25,520
Speaker 2: possession of Pope Sylvester the Second in the tenth century,

257
00:14:25,800 --> 00:14:30,280
Speaker 2: which he also constructed, and misinterpretations of its utterances could

258
00:14:30,320 --> 00:14:31,320
Speaker 2: prove disastrous.

259
00:14:31,800 --> 00:14:35,840
Speaker 3: Oh, is this also believed to be satanic in some way?

260
00:14:37,200 --> 00:14:42,480
Speaker 2: I didn't go too deep on satanic implications, but possibly, I.

261
00:14:42,440 --> 00:14:44,800
Speaker 3: Guess it would depend on if this legend is associated

262
00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:47,480
Speaker 3: with pro Pope Sylvester or anti Pope Sylvester.

263
00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:51,040
Speaker 2: Sources right, right, but you can definitely see that they're

264
00:14:51,160 --> 00:14:53,080
Speaker 2: in the head itself, regardless of what's supposed to be

265
00:14:53,120 --> 00:14:56,520
Speaker 2: powering it. Like this, it ties into two oracular traditions.

266
00:14:56,560 --> 00:14:59,360
Speaker 2: You know, the idea that here is this thing that

267
00:14:59,440 --> 00:15:02,640
Speaker 2: can give you you cryptic wisdom if you have the

268
00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:05,880
Speaker 2: wisdom to decipher what it's telling you. Another example it's

269
00:15:05,880 --> 00:15:09,680
Speaker 2: brought up in Brewers is or the Colossi of Memnon,

270
00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:12,280
Speaker 2: which we did at least a whole I don't know.

271
00:15:12,280 --> 00:15:14,400
Speaker 2: I can't remember as one episode or multiple episodes, but

272
00:15:14,440 --> 00:15:17,840
Speaker 2: we discussed this on stuff to blow your mind. This

273
00:15:17,880 --> 00:15:19,960
Speaker 2: is a fascinating topic in and of itself.

274
00:15:20,200 --> 00:15:22,560
Speaker 3: This was basically, I think a statue or a pair

275
00:15:22,600 --> 00:15:25,680
Speaker 3: of statues a part of sort of a ruins complex

276
00:15:25,840 --> 00:15:30,680
Speaker 3: that was famous during in Roman Egypt as basically because

277
00:15:30,720 --> 00:15:33,640
Speaker 3: it would make sounds, and there were different theories about

278
00:15:33,680 --> 00:15:35,160
Speaker 3: how it made sounds and why.

279
00:15:35,480 --> 00:15:38,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it seems like I think some said it

280
00:15:38,520 --> 00:15:40,880
Speaker 2: was capable of speech, but generally it's described as singing

281
00:15:41,040 --> 00:15:44,160
Speaker 2: or some sort of a note. And as we discussed,

282
00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:47,400
Speaker 2: while there are some I think unlikely theories regarding the

283
00:15:47,480 --> 00:15:51,280
Speaker 2: use of some sort of intentional sound generating device or devices,

284
00:15:51,520 --> 00:15:53,920
Speaker 2: it seems like a more likely explanation would have to

285
00:15:54,000 --> 00:15:57,440
Speaker 2: do with peculiarities of the stone as it heated in

286
00:15:57,520 --> 00:16:00,480
Speaker 2: the sun and then cooled at night. Anyway, go back

287
00:16:00,520 --> 00:16:01,760
Speaker 2: and listen to that episode if you want to know

288
00:16:01,800 --> 00:16:04,160
Speaker 2: about them. They have a pretty fascinating history.

289
00:16:04,360 --> 00:16:06,200
Speaker 3: Will remember better in the original.

290
00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:12,080
Speaker 2: Yes, there's the head of Orpheus at Lesbos, predicting the

291
00:16:12,080 --> 00:16:15,640
Speaker 2: doom and death of Cyrus the Great. However, I believe

292
00:16:15,680 --> 00:16:17,960
Speaker 2: this is generally thought to be the actual head of

293
00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:20,840
Speaker 2: the hero Orpheus after he was torn apart by the

294
00:16:20,880 --> 00:16:25,080
Speaker 2: main ads of Dionysus during a bacchanalia for the sin

295
00:16:25,160 --> 00:16:28,600
Speaker 2: of worshiping Apollo or having worshiped Apollo. I'm not sure

296
00:16:28,600 --> 00:16:31,960
Speaker 2: what the exact charge was, but still a prophetic disembodied

297
00:16:32,000 --> 00:16:35,760
Speaker 2: head that still continues to speak. Brewers also mentions the

298
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:40,000
Speaker 2: head of Minos brought by Odin to Scandinavia, which I

299
00:16:40,040 --> 00:16:42,640
Speaker 2: didn't know what to make of this, because Minos is,

300
00:16:42,680 --> 00:16:49,400
Speaker 2: of course the mythical king of Crete, who we've discussed

301
00:16:49,400 --> 00:16:51,920
Speaker 2: on the show before as well. I think the actual

302
00:16:52,040 --> 00:16:56,120
Speaker 2: figure in reference here might be Nimir, the god of wisdom,

303
00:16:56,160 --> 00:17:01,720
Speaker 2: that is beheaded in the Aservaniir War. Odin claims this

304
00:17:01,840 --> 00:17:05,000
Speaker 2: head and it continues to speak secret wisdom. Again, this

305
00:17:05,080 --> 00:17:07,240
Speaker 2: is another one that's not a mechanical head. It's the

306
00:17:07,240 --> 00:17:10,879
Speaker 2: head of an actual defeated divine being that continues to

307
00:17:10,920 --> 00:17:15,040
Speaker 2: live on and to speak. There are tales of Albertus

308
00:17:15,080 --> 00:17:18,800
Speaker 2: Magnus having an earthen head which during the thirteenth century

309
00:17:18,960 --> 00:17:22,720
Speaker 2: was said to speak and move until Thomas Aquinas breaks

310
00:17:22,720 --> 00:17:25,639
Speaker 2: it by accident, and Magnus says, there goes the labor

311
00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:30,360
Speaker 2: of thirty years because now it's broken. So I don't

312
00:17:30,359 --> 00:17:32,560
Speaker 2: know what to make of that one either completely. But

313
00:17:32,600 --> 00:17:36,120
Speaker 2: again we see this motif of a fabulous artificial head

314
00:17:36,119 --> 00:17:39,520
Speaker 2: that speaks, that manages to break one way or another,

315
00:17:39,560 --> 00:17:43,840
Speaker 2: either something fails, somebody knocks it over, or you know

316
00:17:43,920 --> 00:17:47,440
Speaker 2: it explodes after you hit this neooze alarm twice. Then

317
00:17:47,440 --> 00:17:51,560
Speaker 2: there's Alexander's statue of Ascalapius, the Greek god of medicine,

318
00:17:51,800 --> 00:17:55,440
Speaker 2: that was said to speak, but Lucian wrote that the

319
00:17:55,480 --> 00:17:59,680
Speaker 2: sounds came via a concealed man who spoke through tubes.

320
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:05,120
Speaker 2: So here's an example of some sort of of a creation.

321
00:18:06,359 --> 00:18:08,199
Speaker 2: I guess it depends how you look. Either a statue

322
00:18:08,240 --> 00:18:13,480
Speaker 2: that isn't intended to speak, or through supernatural machinations speaks,

323
00:18:13,640 --> 00:18:16,800
Speaker 2: but according to Lucian, it's in neither of those. It's

324
00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:19,280
Speaker 2: just tubes and some guy like hiding in the bushes

325
00:18:19,320 --> 00:18:22,560
Speaker 2: speaking through the tubes, which is still clever and still technological,

326
00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:24,280
Speaker 2: but is trickery.

327
00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:28,440
Speaker 3: Nonetheless, I think the Lucian you're alluding to there is

328
00:18:28,520 --> 00:18:30,359
Speaker 3: Luci of sam Masada, Is that right?

329
00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:31,119
Speaker 2: I believe?

330
00:18:31,200 --> 00:18:31,240
Speaker 1: So?

331
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:34,240
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, this is like this was an ancient satirist

332
00:18:34,280 --> 00:18:38,879
Speaker 3: from Syria who is quite hilarious and was kind of

333
00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:42,440
Speaker 3: a skeptic debunker of the of like the second century CE,

334
00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:46,200
Speaker 3: which is sort of strange, but he was in that

335
00:18:46,240 --> 00:18:50,480
Speaker 3: mold and he made like vicious mockery of people of

336
00:18:50,520 --> 00:18:54,119
Speaker 3: all sorts and different philosophies and stuff, and also wrote

337
00:18:54,160 --> 00:18:56,600
Speaker 3: a satire that some people have considered one of the

338
00:18:56,640 --> 00:18:58,119
Speaker 3: earliest forms of science fiction.

339
00:18:59,640 --> 00:19:02,080
Speaker 2: Now this also reminds me this is not I mean,

340
00:19:02,200 --> 00:19:05,560
Speaker 2: I guess it memory service. Maybe it did speak. But

341
00:19:06,520 --> 00:19:09,400
Speaker 2: there was of course the Man Face Serpent God glyicon

342
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:13,000
Speaker 2: of the second century that is often held up as

343
00:19:13,040 --> 00:19:16,680
Speaker 2: being a hoax, like it was actually a puppet according

344
00:19:17,280 --> 00:19:21,920
Speaker 2: to commentators. But I've always wondered what to make of that,

345
00:19:22,040 --> 00:19:26,119
Speaker 2: because it kind of if someone is performing puppetry and

346
00:19:26,160 --> 00:19:29,560
Speaker 2: people are having an emotional or even religious reaction to it,

347
00:19:29,560 --> 00:19:31,840
Speaker 2: it kind of depends how it's presented. Right, are you

348
00:19:31,920 --> 00:19:35,800
Speaker 2: presenting Glycan the man Face Serpent as like this is it?

349
00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:39,080
Speaker 2: This is an actual man face serpent God. Come take

350
00:19:39,080 --> 00:19:42,320
Speaker 2: a look that its life? Is proof that he is real?

351
00:19:43,040 --> 00:19:46,240
Speaker 2: Or is it something else? Is it more like performance

352
00:19:46,400 --> 00:19:48,919
Speaker 2: or is it more like reinterpretation? You know, because you

353
00:19:48,960 --> 00:19:53,480
Speaker 2: have plenty of examples where people will carry out performances

354
00:19:53,480 --> 00:19:56,639
Speaker 2: in which people dress as divine and semi divine figures.

355
00:19:57,160 --> 00:19:59,760
Speaker 2: It's not supposed to be like, look at the proof here,

356
00:20:00,119 --> 00:20:03,200
Speaker 2: here is this hero on the stage. This means God

357
00:20:03,240 --> 00:20:03,560
Speaker 2: is real?

358
00:20:03,880 --> 00:20:06,560
Speaker 3: Funny enough, I think Glicon was also written about by

359
00:20:06,640 --> 00:20:11,159
Speaker 3: Lucian of Somesada. But the I guess the crucial question

360
00:20:11,320 --> 00:20:13,919
Speaker 3: is like is there an attempt at trickery or not?

361
00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:17,440
Speaker 3: Like do do you want the audience to believe there

362
00:20:17,520 --> 00:20:19,560
Speaker 3: is not somebody behind the mask?

363
00:20:20,080 --> 00:20:23,159
Speaker 2: Right? And you know that's interesting because that still kind

364
00:20:23,200 --> 00:20:25,679
Speaker 2: of applies to a lot of what's going on in

365
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:29,200
Speaker 2: the world today with things like like chatbots and so forth.

366
00:20:29,240 --> 00:20:33,280
Speaker 2: And you know this idea that if we you know,

367
00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:36,439
Speaker 2: what is coming out of the box, what is coming

368
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:40,360
Speaker 2: out of the artificial head, and you know, we how

369
00:20:40,359 --> 00:20:43,199
Speaker 2: are we interpreting it? And are we thinking there is

370
00:20:43,240 --> 00:20:46,639
Speaker 2: something there that is not? So it's like on what

371
00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:49,800
Speaker 2: level is there trickery? And then there is like interpretation

372
00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:53,480
Speaker 2: of the trickery and so forth. But at any rate,

373
00:20:53,640 --> 00:20:55,520
Speaker 2: I think, you know, some of these examples they proved

374
00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:58,080
Speaker 2: that well before people could make any kind of a

375
00:20:58,119 --> 00:21:01,640
Speaker 2: mechanical thing, be it ahead or not ahead, that could speak,

376
00:21:01,920 --> 00:21:04,480
Speaker 2: we were still capable of dreaming about it. And I

377
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:07,280
Speaker 2: think there's ample evidence that long before anyone attempted to

378
00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:10,680
Speaker 2: make a head that could talk through mechanical means, individuals

379
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:14,720
Speaker 2: sought and sometimes found a voice emerging from disembodied heads,

380
00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:18,600
Speaker 2: either real ones, you know, the remains of human beings

381
00:21:19,080 --> 00:21:24,200
Speaker 2: or other animals, or likenesses of human heads, either attached

382
00:21:24,320 --> 00:21:27,640
Speaker 2: or detached from statues, and so forth. And I think

383
00:21:27,640 --> 00:21:30,159
Speaker 2: there's room between trickery and belief, you know, for the

384
00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:35,200
Speaker 2: suspension of belief and ritual as well to take into account.

385
00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:45,160
Speaker 3: But of course later on people would end up building real,

386
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:49,560
Speaker 3: operable machines that were at least attempting to produce speech

387
00:21:49,680 --> 00:21:51,480
Speaker 3: that could be understood by humans.

388
00:21:51,960 --> 00:21:54,160
Speaker 2: That's right, And this is where we get more into

389
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:58,600
Speaker 2: the deconstruction of what human speech is, which in and

390
00:21:58,640 --> 00:22:03,960
Speaker 2: of itself as a whole subject, but there are key

391
00:22:04,040 --> 00:22:06,960
Speaker 2: moments where we see some major advancements being made here.

392
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:10,680
Speaker 2: So another major entry to discuss in all of this

393
00:22:10,760 --> 00:22:13,520
Speaker 2: is the work of German born Russian doctor, physicist and

394
00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:18,360
Speaker 2: engineer Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, who lives seventeen twenty three through

395
00:22:18,400 --> 00:22:22,840
Speaker 2: seventeen ninety five. So he was a man of various interests,

396
00:22:22,840 --> 00:22:26,200
Speaker 2: including the use of electricity and medicine, and at the

397
00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:29,159
Speaker 2: Saint Petersburg Science Academy at one point offered a prize

398
00:22:29,240 --> 00:22:33,879
Speaker 2: for advancements made in researching the mechanisms behind the vowels

399
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:37,800
Speaker 2: AEI own you in human speech. So in seventeen seventy

400
00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 2: nine he presented his vowel organ to the university. The

401
00:22:43,640 --> 00:22:47,480
Speaker 2: vowel organ consisted of a series of resonators that produced

402
00:22:47,600 --> 00:22:52,520
Speaker 2: vowel like sounds on a constant pitch when excited by

403
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:57,840
Speaker 2: a read. I found some illustrations of these basic resonators

404
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:05,320
Speaker 2: via the UCL Psychology and Language Sciences Department. Here I

405
00:23:05,359 --> 00:23:11,440
Speaker 2: also found a website linked at this website where you

406
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:15,080
Speaker 2: can find instructions for how to make your own resonators

407
00:23:15,080 --> 00:23:19,159
Speaker 2: out of plumbing supplies, which I found rather insightful. I

408
00:23:19,200 --> 00:23:22,639
Speaker 2: did not attempt it, but if you're into plumbing supplies

409
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:26,560
Speaker 2: and vowel sounds, it seems like a natural craft choice.

410
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:30,000
Speaker 3: But the key insight being here that by changing the

411
00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:33,520
Speaker 3: shape of a physical resonating cavity, you can change the

412
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:35,840
Speaker 3: sound of the vowel produced.

413
00:23:36,280 --> 00:23:39,560
Speaker 2: Right right. Another take on this, I was reading the

414
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:42,720
Speaker 2: BBC Future article The Machines That Learned to Listen by

415
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:47,480
Speaker 2: Kadia Muskvich, and it describes these as resonance tubes connected

416
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:50,919
Speaker 2: to organ pipes. So you know, this is not to

417
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:52,520
Speaker 2: say that we had. This is not on this like

418
00:23:52,560 --> 00:23:55,120
Speaker 2: the same level as some sort of imaginary brazen head

419
00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:57,280
Speaker 2: that's going to speak of its own and spout out,

420
00:23:57,520 --> 00:23:59,879
Speaker 2: spit out wisdom for you to interpret. This is a

421
00:24:00,320 --> 00:24:04,679
Speaker 2: just figuring out how these vowel sounds are produced and

422
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:10,600
Speaker 2: reproducing them through a basic mechanical system. Mosfitch also points

423
00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:12,760
Speaker 2: out a few other key individuals in the advancement of

424
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:17,560
Speaker 2: this technology. There's Wolfgang von Kimplin in Vienna, who created

425
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:22,439
Speaker 2: a similar acoustic mechanical speech machine about ten years after Kratzenstein.

426
00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 2: And then she also mentions English inventor Charles Wheatstone, who

427
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:29,600
Speaker 2: would improve on this in the early nineteenth century.

428
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:32,720
Speaker 3: Charles Wheatstone. I'm going to mention him again in a minute,

429
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:35,560
Speaker 3: but he's also notable because he was one of the

430
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:41,000
Speaker 3: inventors of the first commercially successful form of the telegraph.

431
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:43,600
Speaker 3: So we talked about him in our episode on You

432
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:47,200
Speaker 3: of the Telegraph. But when it comes to the one

433
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 3: you mentioned before, that von Kempelan's machine, this is interesting

434
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:57,119
Speaker 3: because I read that while this machine was allegedly real,

435
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 3: it was a real attempt to make a machine that

436
00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:04,920
Speaker 3: would Von Kimpelan is now known for essentially being a hoaxer,

437
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:08,879
Speaker 3: because he tried to create other automata, including a chess

438
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:12,119
Speaker 3: playing automaton that was actually a hoax. It had a

439
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,879
Speaker 3: human inside it doing the move, so it was a

440
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:16,159
Speaker 3: fake robot.

441
00:25:16,240 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 2: Though as a fake still really impressive. It's interesting where

442
00:25:19,520 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 2: you get in, like what sometimes you're wondering you have

443
00:25:21,640 --> 00:25:24,600
Speaker 2: to wonder what the line is between, you know, the

444
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 2: actual technological innovation and trickery. I mean, obviously it's deception,

445
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 2: and if you have a secret chamber in which there's

446
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,360
Speaker 2: a whole person doing stuff, you know, that's a real

447
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 2: red flag there as well. But still the trickery is

448
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 2: pretty ingenious too.

449
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:42,439
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well yeah, I mean it takes skill to be

450
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:43,160
Speaker 3: a good magician.

451
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 2: Yeah.

452
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 3: Anyway, this brings us to the example that I was

453
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:50,000
Speaker 3: really excited to talk about in today's episode, which is

454
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 3: the speaking machine of a nineteenth century inventor named Joseph

455
00:25:55,680 --> 00:25:59,199
Speaker 3: fober So. One of my main sources here is just

456
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:02,440
Speaker 3: generally a good source on the history of speech synthesis

457
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 3: and talking machines. It was a book chapter in the

458
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:10,680
Speaker 3: Rutledge Handbook of Phonetics from twenty nineteen by an author

459
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 3: named Brad H. Story, who is part of the faculty

460
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 3: of the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at

461
00:26:17,359 --> 00:26:22,560
Speaker 3: the University of Arizona, and Story in this chapter traces

462
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:26,159
Speaker 3: the history of speech synthesis from the mechanical methods of

463
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:29,680
Speaker 3: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the digital techniques of

464
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:31,920
Speaker 3: the present. So it's the whole sort of modern arc

465
00:26:32,119 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 3: of these machines. But the thing I really want to

466
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 3: focus in on here now is this machine that I

467
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,919
Speaker 3: mentioned a minute ago by the nineteenth century German inventor

468
00:26:42,119 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 3: Joseph Fober. This features heavily at the beginning of stories

469
00:26:45,880 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 3: chapter here. So this machine was at various different times

470
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 3: called the marvelous talking machine. You got a hyphen between

471
00:26:53,800 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 3: talking machine and also the euphonia from the Greek meaning

472
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:02,639
Speaker 3: good sound or sweet sound. We'll see about that as

473
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:06,480
Speaker 3: we as we go on. Robi included one illustration of

474
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 3: the machine for you to look at here. I think

475
00:27:08,359 --> 00:27:10,960
Speaker 3: this may have been from some kind of promotional material

476
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:13,440
Speaker 3: when this machine was featured in an exhibit that I'll

477
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 3: describe in a bit.

478
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:18,040
Speaker 2: I love it in part because right there is this

479
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 2: angelic human face like right there on the machine, seemingly

480
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:28,000
Speaker 2: as like decoration or maybe tribute. I'm not sure, but

481
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:31,400
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it's actually necessary to the mechanics

482
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:31,919
Speaker 2: of the device.

483
00:27:31,920 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 3: Here, I think it sort of is. Well, I'll explain.

484
00:27:35,840 --> 00:27:40,960
Speaker 3: So story introduces Fober's machine through the eyes of another

485
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:44,879
Speaker 3: inventor and scientist of the day named Joseph Henry. A

486
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:50,160
Speaker 3: different Joseph, a researcher on electromagnetic induction and also the

487
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:56,560
Speaker 3: inaugural secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Henry encountered Faber's marvelous

488
00:27:56,600 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 3: talking machine at a private exhibition in Philadelphia on December twentieth,

489
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:06,159
Speaker 3: eighteen forty five, and he described the demonstration in a

490
00:28:06,280 --> 00:28:09,480
Speaker 3: letter to a colleague named HM. Alexander. So we have

491
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 3: contemporaneous notes on what it was doing and what it

492
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:16,639
Speaker 3: looked like in this private demonstration. So here's how it worked.

493
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 3: It was controlled by an operator via a mainly by

494
00:28:22,520 --> 00:28:26,480
Speaker 3: foot pedals and a keyboard, essentially just like an organ,

495
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 3: like a chamber organ, and in fact the device could

496
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 3: in some ways be considered a modified organ. So you

497
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 3: had a foot pedal that operated a bellows and that

498
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 3: would supply airflow to the whole system, and the bellows

499
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 3: pumped air through an artificial larynx that had vocal cords

500
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 3: that were in this source said to be made of

501
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 3: rubber and these so this artificial glottis or artificial vocal

502
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:57,719
Speaker 3: cords would vibrate to produce the fundamental sound of the

503
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,840
Speaker 3: machine's voice when air was flowing through them. And then

504
00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:05,120
Speaker 3: you had sixteen keys on the keyboard which were connected

505
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 3: by strings and levers to the various components that controlled

506
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,719
Speaker 3: the shaping of that sound of that, you know, the

507
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 3: resonating sound from that airflow through the glottis into speech.

508
00:29:17,040 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 3: One of the interesting things is, as we've been saying,

509
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 3: this device actually had a face. So the face was

510
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:26,520
Speaker 3: made of carved wood, essentially a large doll head, but

511
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:29,400
Speaker 3: it had a hinged jaw. So maybe you should think

512
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 3: of it more like a ventriloquist dummy. You're loving this,

513
00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:35,880
Speaker 3: aren't you. Yeah, Night of the Living dummy. But it

514
00:29:36,160 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 3: can actually speak. And so inside the dummy's mouth there

515
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:44,959
Speaker 3: was an ivory tongue that could be moved around inside

516
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 3: the oral cavity to control the shape of the resonating chamber.

517
00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 3: And by controlling these different elements like the mouth and

518
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 3: the tongue and all that, with the keys on the keyboard.

519
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:01,280
Speaker 3: It quote imposed time varying change to the air cavity

520
00:30:01,640 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 3: appropriate for generating apparently convincing renditions of connected speech. So

521
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 3: it may not have sounded perfect or even pleasant, but

522
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 3: apparently people in the room could understand what the machine

523
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:19,040
Speaker 3: was saying when Fober operated it. So this is eighteen

524
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 3: forty five and the machine is speaking intelligible words. Henry

525
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 3: in this letter compares it favorably to a different talking machine,

526
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 3: one he had seen years before. This was one of

527
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 3: the ones you mentioned, Rob, the one built by the

528
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:35,960
Speaker 3: English scientist and inventor Charles Wheatstone, again the telegraph guy.

529
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 3: Wheatstone's talking machine was capable of being understood for the

530
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:45,360
Speaker 3: set of words it could produce, but Fober's machine was

531
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:50,120
Speaker 3: far superior because its speech repertoire was infinitely variable, so

532
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:54,280
Speaker 3: he could speak whole sentences, and those sentences could contain

533
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 3: any words and any sounds he wanted, as long as

534
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,080
Speaker 3: they were in one of the covered languages. Obviously it

535
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:03,880
Speaker 3: couldn't do, you know, like tonal languages, or like speak

536
00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 3: Mandarin or something, But it seems like mainly it was

537
00:31:06,760 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 3: speaking German and English. It was said at the time

538
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 3: that it could speak any European language. Now, I think

539
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 3: one thing that's really worth noting here is that if

540
00:31:14,640 --> 00:31:17,440
Speaker 3: you imagine how a machine like this would work, the

541
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 3: success of the performance would depend heavily on the skill

542
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 3: of the operator, since the speech patterns are not like

543
00:31:27,200 --> 00:31:32,360
Speaker 3: programmed and you know, not sort of expressed automatically, but

544
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 3: expressed in real time by the player operating the bellows

545
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:38,760
Speaker 3: and the keys. And I think also there were some

546
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 3: screws and stuff that would manipulate pitch and things like that,

547
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,280
Speaker 3: So you have to play this just like you would

548
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:49,560
Speaker 3: play a musical instrument. So different players using the same

549
00:31:49,640 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 3: machine would probably produce fairly different sounding speech, even if

550
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,760
Speaker 3: they had memorized which keys corresponded to which phonetic units.

551
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 3: So nobody ever read says this, But you know, I'm

552
00:32:01,560 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 3: kind of picturing Fober as a sort of phantom of

553
00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:07,040
Speaker 3: the opera at the at the organ keyboard. You know,

554
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 3: he's not just like pressing the keys, but giving a

555
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 3: real passionate and dramatic performance. When somebody sells it, he

556
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 3: yells at yeah, make it say como tale vou or whatever.

557
00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 3: It also sang songs, by the way, I'll get into

558
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 3: that in a minute. But I was wondering, what did

559
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 3: what are people asking, you know, what's the equivalent in

560
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:27,160
Speaker 3: eighteen forty five of yelling out, you know, play Freebird?

561
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:29,040
Speaker 3: And I was thinking, maybe it's people are yelling for

562
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 3: TYPICANU and Tyler too.

563
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.

564
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 3: So an interesting detail that story includes in this chapter

565
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:38,760
Speaker 3: is that this was not the first time Fober had

566
00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 3: built a talking machine. In fact, this was not the

567
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:45,680
Speaker 3: first time Fober had built this exact talking machine. There

568
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,600
Speaker 3: was an earlier version of it that was destroyed by

569
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 3: Fober himself, quote in a bout of depression and intoxication.

570
00:32:53,520 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 3: I should say that nearly every source I read on

571
00:32:56,080 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 3: Fober mentions something about him being disheveled or haunted, obsessed

572
00:33:02,000 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 3: with his machine, and generally emotionally unwell or at the

573
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 3: very least having a really rough time a lot of

574
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 3: the time. Multiple writers describe him in terms containing a

575
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:17,160
Speaker 3: lot of pity. But so, it took Fober apparently twenty

576
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 3: years to perfect the first version of the machine, the

577
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 3: one that he drunkenly destroyed, but he was able to

578
00:33:24,400 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 3: recreate the second version within a year of that. And

579
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 3: this kind of suggests to me the possibility that the

580
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:34,560
Speaker 3: original creation of the machine may have really been a

581
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 3: project of fundamental research about phonetics more than it was

582
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 3: about engineering. And so once he had the knowledge in

583
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 3: hand of how each sound was produced, like what the

584
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:48,360
Speaker 3: shape of the oral cavity, you know, how that corresponded

585
00:33:48,360 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 3: to the sounds, recreating the machine itself might have been

586
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 3: a relatively simple proposition. Is really what you needed was

587
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 3: the knowledge about how phonetics correspond to physical shapes.

588
00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:02,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, had that, and certainly they had notes on the

589
00:34:02,240 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 2: matter and his designs recorded. It would be easier to

590
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:07,400
Speaker 2: come back and reproduce that.

591
00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Joseph Henry's letter about Faber's talking machine demonstration

592
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 3: it also includes speculation about the uses to which a

593
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:21,000
Speaker 3: machine like this could be put. One interesting idea he

594
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:24,240
Speaker 3: has is what if you could take a spoken message

595
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:29,400
Speaker 3: at one location and code that spoken message into inputs

596
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 3: on this keyboard on this machine, and then, through electromagnetic means,

597
00:34:35,080 --> 00:34:40,520
Speaker 3: transmit those keystrokes across wires to a totally separate second location,

598
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 3: and then those electrical signals could operate the speech organs

599
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 3: of the doll faced machine. In the second location. You

600
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:55,080
Speaker 3: would essentially be transmitting speech itself. Across great distance. Notable

601
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 3: that Henry's idea here is roughly thirty years before Alexander

602
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 3: Graham Bell demonstrates the principle of the telephone. But there

603
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 3: is a very important difference, which is that while Bell's

604
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 3: telephone and these are stories words here quote transmitted an

605
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 3: electrical analog of the speech pressure wave. Henry's description alluded

606
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 3: to representing speech in compressed form based on slowly varying

607
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:23,879
Speaker 3: movements of the operator's hands, fingers, and feet as they

608
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:27,920
Speaker 3: formed the keystroke sequences required to produce an utterance, a

609
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:31,719
Speaker 3: signal processing technique that would not be implemented into telephone

610
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 3: transmission systems for nearly another century. So the interesting thing

611
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:39,839
Speaker 3: about Henry here is that he's not just imagining converting

612
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 3: the sound of a voice into an impulse that travels

613
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:47,319
Speaker 3: along the wire. He's imagining a coding process. It's put

614
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:50,719
Speaker 3: into code for the transmission and then decoded by the

615
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:51,960
Speaker 3: machine at the other end.

616
00:35:52,640 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 2: I can't help but try to imagine this alternate past

617
00:35:56,440 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 2: in which instead of early telephones, people all had this

618
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:06,120
Speaker 2: weird cherub head mounted on the wall that then speaks

619
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:09,920
Speaker 2: to you. In this I'm assumed slightly haunting voice.

620
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 3: Oh, I'll get to the haunting voice in a second,

621
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:16,319
Speaker 3: but anyway, story flags It as historically significant that this

622
00:36:16,400 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 3: one invention had both succeeded in producing generally intelligible synthetic

623
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 3: speech to people in the room with it, and it

624
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:27,800
Speaker 3: had inspired at least one onlooker to start considering ideas

625
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 3: for the electrical transmission of low bandwidth speech from one

626
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 3: place to another. But neither of these possibilities really went anywhere.

627
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:39,239
Speaker 3: Henry did not devote any more effort to musing about

628
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:44,440
Speaker 3: the electrical transmission, and Fober's machine ended up being a

629
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:49,760
Speaker 3: circus side show, almost literally. So after this, Fober needed money,

630
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:53,840
Speaker 3: and beginning in eighteen forty six, to get money, he

631
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,360
Speaker 3: signed on to demonstrate his machine for p. T. Barnum

632
00:36:57,480 --> 00:37:00,959
Speaker 3: got to have something for everybody, even people who want

633
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 3: a talking doll head operated by a disheveled German organ master.

634
00:37:06,280 --> 00:37:10,239
Speaker 3: So Faber committed to exhibit the marvelous Speaking Machine four

635
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:14,239
Speaker 3: Barnum at the Egyptian Hall in London. This was like

636
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 3: a general exhibition hall in Piccadilly, which hosted all kinds

637
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:20,799
Speaker 3: of shows, but I think especially in the latter part

638
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 3: of the nineteenth century, it was known for showing like

639
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:29,479
Speaker 3: a lot of Mountebanks and fraudulent spiritualist demonstrators. Yeah, I'll

640
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 3: reveal to you that you're actually a reincarnation of Cleopatra.

641
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,600
Speaker 3: Lucky you. But by noting that that's just a random thing,

642
00:37:37,600 --> 00:37:40,719
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to cast dispersions on Fober, because I

643
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,680
Speaker 3: want to stress that it seems totally clear that Fober

644
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,640
Speaker 3: was no con artist. As best we can tell, his

645
00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:51,280
Speaker 3: machine really did work, and when played correctly, it did

646
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 3: really speak original sentences that people could, for the most

647
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 3: part understand.

648
00:37:56,360 --> 00:37:56,640
Speaker 2: Though.

649
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:00,799
Speaker 3: One thing that emerges from reading descriptions of this is

650
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 3: that coding intelligible information and sounding like speech are two

651
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 3: completely different things. So it seems that a lot of

652
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 3: people could tell what the machine was saying, but still

653
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 3: they were not very impressed by what they heard. And

654
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 3: I found a spectacularly evocative description of what the machine

655
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:26,560
Speaker 3: was like I recorded in a book called Instruments and

656
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:30,600
Speaker 3: the Imagination by Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman,

657
00:38:30,760 --> 00:38:34,319
Speaker 3: Princeton University Press, nineteen ninety nine. But the main thing

658
00:38:34,360 --> 00:38:37,319
Speaker 3: here is that they're quoting a person who saw the

659
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 3: machine in person in eighteen forty six, I believe, and

660
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 3: then wrote about it in a memoir. But generally the

661
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:45,520
Speaker 3: authors here they note that there were like some satirical

662
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 3: articles making reference to Faber's machine, suggesting, for example, that

663
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,319
Speaker 3: it could be used to replace the speaker of the

664
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:57,319
Speaker 3: House of Commons. Yak, yeah, those wacky politicians. But then

665
00:38:57,960 --> 00:38:59,720
Speaker 3: well they do kind of make a funny point. Actually,

666
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:01,839
Speaker 3: they say, like you could just program it to say

667
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:04,080
Speaker 3: order order at ten minute intervals.

668
00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:07,760
Speaker 2: Well that's pretty good, that's funny today.

669
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 3: Yeah. But anyway, then there's a part of the book

670
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 3: where they're including this evocative written account which is from

671
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 3: a London theater manager named John Hollingshead who saw this

672
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:22,960
Speaker 3: machine in person when he was nineteen years old and

673
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:25,880
Speaker 3: then wrote about it in a memoirs or some book.

674
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:30,760
Speaker 3: But anyway, this is Hollingshead's account. The exhibitor, Professor Fober,

675
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,880
Speaker 3: was a sad faced man, dressed in respectable, well worn

676
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 3: clothes that were soiled by contact with tools, wood and machinery.

677
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 3: The room looked like a laboratory and workshop, which it was.

678
00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 3: The professor was not too clean, and his hair and

679
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:50,239
Speaker 3: beard sadly wanted the attention of a barber. I have

680
00:39:50,320 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 3: no doubt that he slept in the same room as

681
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 3: his figure, his scientific Frankenstein Monster. Note. I guess the

682
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 3: novel would have only been a few decades old this time.

683
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:03,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, eighteen eighteen on Frankenstein there.

684
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, going on with hallings Head and I felt

685
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,000
Speaker 3: the secret influence of an idea that the two were

686
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 3: destined to live and die together.

687
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,800
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is those pretty strong words.

688
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:20,319
Speaker 3: Yes, the professor, with a slight German accent, put his

689
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 3: wonderful toy in motion. He explained its action. It was

690
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 3: not necessary to prove the absence of deception. One keyboard

691
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 3: touched by the professor produced words which, slowly and deliberately,

692
00:40:32,800 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 3: in a hoarse, sepulchral voice, came from the mouth of

693
00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 3: the figure, as if from the depths of a tomb.

694
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:43,040
Speaker 3: It wanted little imagination to make the very few visitors

695
00:40:43,120 --> 00:40:46,959
Speaker 3: believe that the figure contained an imprisoned human or half

696
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 3: human being, bound to speak slowly when tormented by the

697
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 3: unseen power outside. No one thought for a moment that

698
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 3: they were being fooled by a second edition of The

699
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 3: Invisible Girl fra Allod And by the way, the reference

700
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 3: to the Invisible Girl fraud, I believe is about the

701
00:41:05,080 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 3: many fake machines and fake automata that were actually worked

702
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:11,919
Speaker 3: by having a human hidden inside operating it but going

703
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:14,880
Speaker 3: out so holling said, says, nobody thought that there was

704
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 3: an invisible girl operating. This as clear, this is real.

705
00:41:18,200 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 3: He goes on, there were truth, laborious invention, and good

706
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,719
Speaker 3: faith in every part of the melancholy room. As a

707
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:29,960
Speaker 3: crowning display, the head sang a sepulchral version of God

708
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 3: Save the Queen, which suggested, inevitably, God save the inventor.

709
00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:39,279
Speaker 3: This extraordinary effect was achieved by the professor working two keyboards,

710
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 3: one for the words and one for the music. Never

711
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,880
Speaker 3: probably before or since, has the national anthem been so sung,

712
00:41:47,520 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 3: sadder and wiser. I and the few visitors crept slowly

713
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:54,440
Speaker 3: from the place, leaving the professor with his one and

714
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:58,920
Speaker 3: only treasure, his child of infinite labor and unmeasurable sorrow.

715
00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is a lot. I mean, obviously, he's

716
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 2: lee lays it on really thick about the sadness of

717
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 2: the inventor here. And then also there's the ideas like

718
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,520
Speaker 2: this was no hoax, this was real and it was depressing.

719
00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought, it's a weird mix of like like

720
00:42:16,920 --> 00:42:20,920
Speaker 3: pity but real admiration, you know that, Like, there's something

721
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 3: beautiful and honest and true about this machine and his

722
00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:27,799
Speaker 3: devotion to it and the genius it took to create it.

723
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:32,040
Speaker 3: But also it makes everybody feel bad and nobody wants

724
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:34,040
Speaker 3: to look at it or listen to it, and everybody

725
00:42:34,120 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 3: leaves feeling depressed. Yeah, something about that struck me as

726
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:41,879
Speaker 3: actually quite poignant and meaningful. Maybe we can come back

727
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:43,840
Speaker 3: to that in a minute, but I did want to

728
00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:47,520
Speaker 3: flag that there was one notable visitor who, coming back

729
00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 3: to the Invisible Girl suspicion, he did at first suspect fraud,

730
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:54,960
Speaker 3: and that was the Duke of Wellington. I was reading

731
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:57,240
Speaker 3: about this in a book called The Shows of London

732
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 3: by Richard Daniel Atlick, and at Lick recounts that Wellington,

733
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,319
Speaker 3: when he first went to the demonstration, he was so

734
00:43:05,480 --> 00:43:09,719
Speaker 3: impressed by Faber's speaking machine that he asked to be

735
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 3: allowed to touch the keys with his own fingers, you know,

736
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:15,359
Speaker 3: so he could see that it was genuine. And then

737
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:17,840
Speaker 3: he did confirm that it was genuine, and then he

738
00:43:17,920 --> 00:43:20,799
Speaker 3: insisted that he'd be taught how to use it, so

739
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:24,080
Speaker 3: Fober taught the Duke to play the machine in both

740
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 3: German and English, and Wellington did get it like he could.

741
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:30,640
Speaker 3: He could make it speak sentences in German and English,

742
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 3: and he was amazed, writing in the visitor's log of

743
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:37,840
Speaker 3: the exhibit that the speaking machine, or the Euphonia, was

744
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 3: quote an extraordinary production of mechanical genius. Faber's machine also

745
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:56,400
Speaker 3: got rave reviews in The Times, in the Illustrated London News.

746
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:00,160
Speaker 3: A lot of people like looked at it and they

747
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 3: they thought that, like, yeah, this is a work of genius.

748
00:44:03,239 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 3: It's incredible that he's done this. But at the same time,

749
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:11,279
Speaker 3: audiences really were not into it. Barnum himself noticed that

750
00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:14,600
Speaker 3: Fober's machine was not attracting crowds, it was not selling

751
00:44:14,640 --> 00:44:19,040
Speaker 3: tickets and not generating revenue, and so eventually he took

752
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:23,560
Speaker 3: Fober's machine out of the Egyptian Hall in London and

753
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,360
Speaker 3: added it to a traveling exhibit that went around the

754
00:44:26,360 --> 00:44:31,440
Speaker 3: English countryside doing performances. And from here Fober himself seems

755
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 3: to kind of disappear from the historical record. Some sources

756
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 3: indicate that he may have died by suicide during this period,

757
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:42,720
Speaker 3: though that isn't known. For sure, But after historical sources

758
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 3: stopped mentioning Fober himself, they still make references to his

759
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:51,240
Speaker 3: machine reading from story here quote. Although his talking machine

760
00:44:51,520 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 3: continued to make side show like appearances in Europe and

761
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 3: North America over the next thirty years. It seems a relative,

762
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 3: perhaps a niece or nephew you may have inherited the

763
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 3: machine and performed with it to generate income.

764
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:08,400
Speaker 2: So maybe no matter whatever happened to him, maybe a

765
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:11,719
Speaker 2: relative with a little more showmanship like stepped in and

766
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:14,239
Speaker 2: was able to make at least some sort of an

767
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:15,040
Speaker 2: income off of it.

768
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:18,240
Speaker 3: Yes, but then again, like I'm struck by the strange,

769
00:45:18,280 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 3: ironic sadness of this. This this was actually a scientifically

770
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 3: significant invention, Like he had done something kind of amazing,

771
00:45:28,640 --> 00:45:31,880
Speaker 3: but it just never really went anywhere under his mastery.

772
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 3: And then yeah, maybe a relative was a better Carnival

773
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 3: Barker essentially to perform with the machine and make some

774
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:40,319
Speaker 3: money off of it.

775
00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:42,799
Speaker 2: I mean, it reminds me of so many advancements in

776
00:45:43,000 --> 00:45:48,480
Speaker 2: say robotics, that we've seen over the years, where oftentimes,

777
00:45:48,719 --> 00:45:51,480
Speaker 2: you know, to a certain extent, unfairly, they'll just be

778
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 2: one little clip of it that goes viral and people

779
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:57,360
Speaker 2: react to be it some sort of you know, a

780
00:45:58,120 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 2: human likeness with facial features that seem to be moving

781
00:46:01,600 --> 00:46:04,520
Speaker 2: or operating in an uncanny way, or something like the

782
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:11,160
Speaker 2: various dog robots from Boston Dynamics that are very impressive

783
00:46:11,200 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 2: but also may be interpreted as being a bit creepy.

784
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 2: And so even though they are these, you know, they're

785
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:23,000
Speaker 2: often examples of a real impressive technological advancement setting aside

786
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 2: actual applications, you can have a situation where something like

787
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:32,919
Speaker 2: that is not as comforting, not as entertaining as say

788
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 2: an act of puppetry, or even an act of just

789
00:46:36,320 --> 00:46:40,080
Speaker 2: outright well maybe not fraud, but say a robot or

790
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:46,000
Speaker 2: a costume depicting a robot maybe ultimately maybe more reassuring,

791
00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:48,399
Speaker 2: maybe more fun compared to the actual thing.

792
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 3: Well yeah, which may which may just be fun or

793
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 3: may in fact be fraud, depending on what exactly they're

794
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:54,839
Speaker 3: saying about it.

795
00:46:55,200 --> 00:46:56,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this.

796
00:46:56,760 --> 00:46:58,480
Speaker 3: Is a great point and it brings me to I

797
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:01,160
Speaker 3: just wanted to mention a few of the the general

798
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 3: notes about the history of speech synthesis from the end

799
00:47:05,200 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 3: of this book chapter by Brad's story Story Rights that

800
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 3: you know, while there are technological use cases for speech synthesizers.

801
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:16,759
Speaker 3: You know, we've got a number of them operating in

802
00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 3: consumer technology today, and even before you had you know,

803
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:24,680
Speaker 3: personal digital assistants and stuff, there would be use cases

804
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:28,920
Speaker 3: for speech synthesizers for, for example, people who have a

805
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 3: disability that makes it difficult or impossible for them to speak.

806
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,759
Speaker 3: Another one is that apparently this was actually used by

807
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:38,000
Speaker 3: the Allies in World War Two, there were some forms

808
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:42,880
Speaker 3: of speech synthesis that would allow sort of covert coded

809
00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 3: transmissions of something like a phone call, so you could

810
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 3: have a phone call between like FDR and Winston Churchill.

811
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 3: It's not really a phone call, it's like a transmitted

812
00:47:53,200 --> 00:47:56,759
Speaker 3: synthesized bit of speech, and so it's very secure. But

813
00:47:56,840 --> 00:47:59,919
Speaker 3: it doesn't sound like the person talking. It sounds maybe

814
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:03,320
Speaker 3: more like the euphonia, kind of robotic and unnatural and

815
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 3: maybe making the president's giggle a bit a president Prime minister.

816
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:12,240
Speaker 3: But anyway, So what story says is that a large

817
00:48:12,320 --> 00:48:15,839
Speaker 3: number of these systems have actually been primarily used as

818
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 3: research tools, as scientific tools for understanding the nature of

819
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 3: human speech. It's by trying to reproduce human speech and

820
00:48:26,160 --> 00:48:29,919
Speaker 3: failing at it that we come closer to understanding how

821
00:48:30,040 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 3: speech actually works in the human body. But the second

822
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 3: general observation that I thought is interesting, and this seems

823
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 3: to be very much reflected in the Fober's machine example.

824
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:44,319
Speaker 3: It is much easier to create a machine that can

825
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:50,440
Speaker 3: speak intelligibly than one that can speak naturally. So that

826
00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:53,600
Speaker 3: indicates that when we talk, there's actually more than one

827
00:48:53,719 --> 00:48:58,240
Speaker 3: thing going on. Yes, we are conveying mental information coded

828
00:48:58,280 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 3: in words, and the substance of that coding is phonetic.

829
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 3: It's a series of sounds. But of course, you know,

830
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:08,279
Speaker 3: the ironic thing to people who were used to thinking

831
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:11,319
Speaker 3: about words as text is that the phonetic core of

832
00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 3: language long predates writing, so like the written text of

833
00:49:14,719 --> 00:49:17,759
Speaker 3: a word is a visual code for the sound of

834
00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:21,000
Speaker 3: the word, which is the code for its meaning. But anyway,

835
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:24,520
Speaker 3: so machines for hundreds of years have been able to

836
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:29,440
Speaker 3: produce more or less intelligible phonetic code. They can speak words,

837
00:49:29,440 --> 00:49:32,360
Speaker 3: and people can understand what the words are supposed to be,

838
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:37,239
Speaker 3: But it doesn't necessarily mean that people perceive these machines

839
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:42,000
Speaker 3: as speaking, because there's another important quality to speech that

840
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 3: was not really captured by these early machines, and you

841
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 3: could argue is still somewhat lacking in the best speech

842
00:49:48,640 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 3: synthesis of today, and that is the natural character of

843
00:49:52,520 --> 00:49:58,920
Speaker 3: continuous speech. These machines always produce speech that sounded stilted, unreal, alien.

844
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:01,799
Speaker 3: It was never something that would make you feel like

845
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:05,200
Speaker 3: you were actually being talked to, as much as sort

846
00:50:05,239 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 3: of receiving a weird alien code in your language and

847
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 3: here I just want to read from the stories chapter quote.

848
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 3: As a result, synthesis often presents itself as an oral

849
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:22,800
Speaker 3: caricature that can be perceived as an unnatural and sometimes

850
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:26,920
Speaker 3: amusing rendition of a desired utterance or speech sound. It

851
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:31,279
Speaker 3: is particularly unique to phonetics and speech science that the

852
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:35,759
Speaker 3: models used as tools to understand the scientific aspects of

853
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 3: a complex system produce a signal intended to be heard

854
00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 3: as if it were a human. As such, the quality

855
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:47,080
Speaker 3: of a speech synthesis can be rather harshly judged because

856
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 3: the model on which it is based has not accounted

857
00:50:50,200 --> 00:50:54,239
Speaker 3: for the myriad of subtle variations and details that combine

858
00:50:54,440 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 3: in natural human speech. So to paraphrase, speech is so

859
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:02,279
Speaker 3: much more than just the words, And even if you

860
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:05,839
Speaker 3: can get the words right, there's still something that is

861
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:08,319
Speaker 3: that is lacking and this is going to take a

862
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:10,320
Speaker 3: lot of work to try to capture.

863
00:51:10,640 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is fascinating to think about, you know,

864
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:16,640
Speaker 2: especially given what you mentioned earlier about it's the importance

865
00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:21,400
Speaker 2: of speech the synthesizer technology to aid people who cannot

866
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:24,719
Speaker 2: speak or have lost the ability to speak. You know,

867
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:27,279
Speaker 2: I gave probably one of the most famous, if not

868
00:51:27,320 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 2: the most famous examples of this is, of course, the

869
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:36,840
Speaker 2: speech synthesizer used by theoretical Stephen Hawking. Like one of

870
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:39,760
Speaker 2: the interesting things about his story with it, as I remember,

871
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:42,640
Speaker 2: is that just me mentioning it, you can probably sort

872
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 2: of hear the voice, the synthesized voice of Stephen Hawking

873
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:49,120
Speaker 2: in your head. And I know that at some point

874
00:51:49,239 --> 00:51:52,399
Speaker 2: like that was you know, an early system he got there,

875
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 2: and later on in life he had he could have

876
00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 2: switched the voice up, he could have changed the voice,

877
00:51:57,320 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 2: and I'm assuming could have maybe improved upon it, but

878
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:03,920
Speaker 2: by that point he felt that this was his voice.

879
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:05,799
Speaker 2: You know, you can't switch it up. You know, this

880
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:08,200
Speaker 2: is this is how I speak, and this is how

881
00:52:08,239 --> 00:52:11,640
Speaker 2: I hear myself. So I always found that that interesting,

882
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 2: and especially when and then you can compare that to

883
00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:16,760
Speaker 2: some other cases like you know, film credit Roger Ebert

884
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:18,800
Speaker 2: late in life, you know, you could no longer speak,

885
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:21,480
Speaker 2: but had I think they had a more robust system

886
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:24,839
Speaker 2: put together based on samples of you know, the the

887
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:29,319
Speaker 2: great catalog of his own recorded speeches and reviews and

888
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 2: so forth that they could draw upon, and then looking

889
00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:35,200
Speaker 2: into the future, you have situations like James Earl Jones's

890
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:41,160
Speaker 2: Darth Vader voice, that being you know, sort of archived

891
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 2: and prepared for so that in the future you can

892
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 2: you can basically have like a machine synthesized version of

893
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:52,840
Speaker 2: that voice that will stand in as a sort of

894
00:52:52,920 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 2: one to one replication of what James Earl Jones did

895
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 2: in life with the voice acting, or at least so.

896
00:52:59,480 --> 00:53:01,680
Speaker 3: The proponent of the technology would say, I'm sure there

897
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:03,480
Speaker 3: would be critics who would say it's never going to

898
00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:04,759
Speaker 3: be at one to one.

899
00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:07,160
Speaker 2: Right, right, And then of course there's also the argument

900
00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:11,480
Speaker 2: specifically with only with Darth Vader. Here am I discussing this,

901
00:53:11,600 --> 00:53:14,719
Speaker 2: but obviously the case can be made that like we

902
00:53:14,840 --> 00:53:19,720
Speaker 2: we shouldn't reproduce, you know, deceased actors' voices to continue

903
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 2: a fictional role. We should employ new living actors. And

904
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:27,360
Speaker 2: existing living voice actors who can do the voice. I

905
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:30,000
Speaker 2: think with Darth Vader in particular, you could make a

906
00:53:30,000 --> 00:53:32,160
Speaker 2: strong case for that because there are other voice actors

907
00:53:32,160 --> 00:53:36,000
Speaker 2: who do officially voice act that character and do a

908
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:39,719
Speaker 2: great job with it. What does it mean if if

909
00:53:39,719 --> 00:53:44,120
Speaker 2: that individual's job is potentially taken by this sort of

910
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:48,880
Speaker 2: machine likeness of that voice that is authorized based on

911
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:53,280
Speaker 2: the voice of a you know, of a retired or

912
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:55,600
Speaker 2: or in some cases you know, deceased individual.

913
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,160
Speaker 3: Well, we're going a little off topic now, but I

914
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:00,520
Speaker 3: will say that I stand by what I've said before,

915
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 3: which is I'm firmly in the camp that I prefer

916
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:07,600
Speaker 3: recasting with a different actor as opposed to using technology

917
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 3: to try to synthesize the voice or appearance of an

918
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:14,279
Speaker 3: actor who, for whatever reason cannot be present. People have

919
00:54:14,280 --> 00:54:17,160
Speaker 3: been recasting the same role with different actors for decades.

920
00:54:17,200 --> 00:54:19,319
Speaker 3: That happens all the time. Like, what's the problem with it?

921
00:54:19,840 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 2: Yeah? I agree, I agree, But in some cases, is

922
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:28,239
Speaker 2: it possible that a role that's been established by a

923
00:54:28,280 --> 00:54:34,439
Speaker 2: living actor could not be just masterfully redone by a

924
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:38,840
Speaker 2: clunky machine with the face of a cherub that is

925
00:54:39,960 --> 00:54:42,719
Speaker 2: manipulated by a sad German Man who needs a haircut.

926
00:54:42,920 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 2: I think there's some potential there, like I don't know

927
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 2: the next James Bond.

928
00:54:46,640 --> 00:54:50,040
Speaker 3: Maybe this is the only film genre I'm interested in

929
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:55,239
Speaker 3: from now on, high tension espionage movies starring the Euphonia.

930
00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:00,120
Speaker 2: So there you have it. The machine speaks, obviously, I'd

931
00:55:00,120 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there if you have

932
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:03,480
Speaker 2: thoughts on all of this, and certainly anyone out there

933
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:08,680
Speaker 2: who has direct experience with speech synthesizer technology for one

934
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 2: use or another right in, we would love to hear

935
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:11,480
Speaker 2: from you.

936
00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:17,280
Speaker 3: Just a reminder, I just the speech synthesis or speech

937
00:55:17,360 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 3: synthesizer is one of the hardest pairs of words to enunciate,

938
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 3: and I've had to say it so many times in

939
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 3: this episode. I just want to be recognized, especially for

940
00:55:26,640 --> 00:55:27,920
Speaker 3: the times I probably did it wrong.

941
00:55:28,719 --> 00:55:31,600
Speaker 2: Yes, well it's easy for the babyface machines though, Yeah,

942
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:34,279
Speaker 2: so at any rate. Yeah, if you want to listen

943
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 2: to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you

944
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:37,239
Speaker 2: will find them in the Stuff to Bliw Your Mind

945
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 2: podcast feed with our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mondays,

946
00:55:41,160 --> 00:55:43,359
Speaker 2: we do a listener mail Wednesdays, we do a short

947
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:45,919
Speaker 2: form artufactor monster fact, and then on Fridays we set

948
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,560
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird

949
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:50,239
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema.

950
00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:54,399
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If

951
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:55,799
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with

952
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:58,360
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

953
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:00,440
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

954
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

955
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:11,320
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

956
00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:14,319
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

957
00:56:14,400 --> 00:56:17,200
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

958
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:34,320
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.