Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-10-12

An INGENIOUS MACHINE.-The New York
Times has the following account of a machine
that caa talk, laugh and sing:
A perseverng Frenchman once constructed a
machine, in the form of duck, which could
walk, clap its wings, pick up grains of corn,
and more wonderful still, digest them, but
machine capable of talking was supposed to be
beyond the power of human ingenuity to con-
Struct. Kempelen, German, made a number
of puppets that uttered the words "papa" and
mamma" but after devoting his life TO per-
fecting them, he asserted that a machine
which could utter all the words in use in Eu-
ropean languages was an imposSibility. After
his death his puppets became dumb, no one
understanding the mechanism by which they
were made to speak. Kempelen's impossible
ty has been at last overcome. In 1871 Pro-
feSSOr Faber exhibited a machine which could
utter great number Of sounds and words, but
ii was by no means perfect. His nephew took
up the machine that his uncle had failed in per-
lecting, and completed it. After exhibiting it
before all the crowned heads and scientific So
cieties of Europe, he has brought it to this cOun-
try, and Yesterday gave an exhibition Of it in pr-
vate. The machine, which stands on a small
table, consists of a complicated arrangement
of rubber TUBES, reeds, keys, pedals, strings,
and wires. The lungs are represented by
small pair of bellows, the CLOTHS by reeds aud
pipes of different sizes, the lips and tongue by
pieces of indla-rubber. Beneath the table is a
pedal by which the bellows are worked, and
on the right hand side a series of keys, on
which are marked the letters 0, U, l, E, L, r,
w, F, S, b, D and G. With these and some
supplementary arrangements, all sounds used
in the European languages can be enunciat-
cd. There is also an arrangement resembling
the keyboard of a piano, by which
the machine can be made to sing. Every por-
ton of it is open to view, so that no deception
is possible. Yesterday the machine, under the
deft hands Of Nine. Faber, enunciated distinct
ly all the letters of the English and German al
phabets, numerous long and most difficult
words, such as "COnstantinOple," "Politzka,"
mississippi" Radically" "hurrah," and then
darted off into long sentences in English, Ger
man and French, winding up with laugh of
the most natural kind, followed by Kisses,
groans and murmurs. Every word proposed
was pronounced Mt once and without the slight
est hesitation. OF course some words were
majority were given far more clearly than the
majority of human beings pronounce them, and
even the nasal twang which French people
often adopt was closely initiated. In Prof
Faber's machine the motions of the mouth and
tongue initiate precisely those Of human beings.
Different keys or tones can be given by proper
manipulation of the pedals. Taken altogether,
the talking machine" is a wonderful specimen
of mans ingenuity. Whether it can ever be
anything more is doubtful. 1t cannot be APP
piled to any practical purpose, unless, indeed,
dumb or weak-nerVed and feeble-vOiced indi-
viduals should choose to purchase them and
use them as mediums through which to address
the public.
Prof Faber, we believe, intends to exhibit his
machine in public as soon as arrangements can
be made for that purpose. The singing portion
of the machine not being in order yesterday, we
were unable to determine what merit the inyen-
ton possesses as q vocalist.