MDDM23: A Curious Accent

[Dave Monroe]

"It faced me...its ominous Beak crank'd open...it
quack'd, its eye holding a certain gleam, and began to
speak, in a curious Accent, inflected heavily with
linguo-beccal Fricatives, issuing in a fine Mist of
some digestive Liquid, upon pure faith in whose
harmlessness I was obliged to proceed.
   "'So,' spray'd the Duck,--" (M&D, Ch. 37, p. 375)

Reminds me ...

"linguo-beccal" = of the tongue and beak ...

Cf. ...

"'... le Bec de la Mort, the..."Beak of Death."'"
(M&D, Ch. 37, p. 374)

>From Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman,
Instruments and the Imagination (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 1995), Ch. 8, "Vox Mechanica: The
History of Speaking Machines," pp. 178-220 ...

"The desire to imitate the human voice is as ancient
as history and as pervasive as human culture.  Because
the goal has appeared in a variety of investigative
contexts, we do not expect to find a single line of
development stretching from the speaking heads of
antiquity to mmodern computer synthesizers.  Instead
we find different groups concerned with different
aspects of the problem: natural magicians using
speaking tubes or ventriloquism to produce the
appearance of artificial speech; students of
physiology trying to understand the mechanism of
speech; acousticians trying to analyze and reproduce
vowel sounds; inventors creating apparatues to record
and transmit speech at a distance; musicians
attempting to duplicate the timbre of the voice in
their instruments...." (p. 178)

"... there was a question as to how one should
duplicate human function.  Should a speaking machine
copy the anatomy of the orgnas of speech, or should it
merely re-create the sounds of speech?  Should it
speak with a normal human voice or should it magnify
the voice?" (p. 178)

"Although the ancient speaking statues and the Greek
head of Orpheus at Lesbos were 'fakes'--their effect
was produced by concealed priests whose words reached
the statue's lips through a tube, or by ventriloquism
[belly-speaking]--these examples deserve attention, by
virtue of their outward appearance and effect." (p.
179)

   "The long history of mythical speaking machines
often involved the supernatural.  These tales usually
connect mechanical dexterity with sorcery.... Albertus
Magnus allegedly constructed a head of earthenware
that could speak .... Robert Grosseteste supposedly
constructed a speaking head of brass that could
foretell the future.  Roger Bacon and his cohort,
Friar Bungay, crafted a brazen head that exactly
copiied the internal works of human anatomy.  Yet to
obtain for it the power of speech, they needed to seek
advice from Satan.
   "The imitation of voice also appeared in the works
of Francis Bacon...." (p. 179)

Athanasius Kircher (p. 180)

John Wilkins (pp. 180-1)

Robert Hooke (pp. 181-2)

Jacques de Vauncanson (pp. 182-4)

   "Doyon and Liaigre have documented Vaucanson's own
lengthy, but ultimately fruitless, plans to build an
automaton that would mimic the circulation of blood. 
The project intrigued Louis XV, who approved (and even
demanded) the manufacture of the automaton in
Guyana--a location necessary to maintain the supply of
caoutchouc (india rubber).  According to Condorcet's
eloge, Vaucanson became frustrated with teh attendant
bureaucratic obstacles and the automaton never came to
be.
   "Projects to build artificial circulatory systems
were often associated with attempts to imitate the
voice....  Although no surviving evidence indicates
Vaucanson's explicit interest in the problem, several
writers summoned the mechanician to solve the mystery
of vocal physiology.  In 17838, the abbe Desfontaine
invited Vaucanson to imitate speech as an encore to
his duck and flute player.  Julien Offray de La
Mettrie--in his 1748 materialist tract, L'homme
machine--explained that Vaucanson;s skill might reveal
the workings of this piece if human machinery.  In his
L'art du chant (1755), Jean Blanchet wrote:

One could imagine & make a tongue, a palate, some
teeth, ome lips, a nose & some springs whose material
& figure resemble as perfectly as could be possible
those of the mouth: one could imitate teh action that
takes place in these items for the generation of
words: one would be able to arrange these artificial
organs in the automaton of which I have spoken.  From
then on, it will be capable of singing, not only the
most brilliant airs, but also the most beautiful
verse.  Here is a phenomenon that would demand all the
invention & industry of an Archimedes, or else a
Vaucanson & would astonish all of learned Europe.

   "Part of the interest in this problem arose from
Antoine Ferrein's challenge to the prevailing
assessment of vocal physiology.  In 1700, Denis Dodart
had offered a major revision of Galen's theory of the
voice.  While Galen had compared the vocal organ to a
flute and had claimed that the length of th trachea
determined the vocal pitch, Dodart dismissed the
analogy and attributed the production of all sound sto
the glottis.  In 1741, however, Ferrein introduced a
new musical instrumenbt analogy for the voice.... 
Ferrein believed that the folds of the glottis formed
the two true 'vocal cords'--he coined the term--and
that air rushing through the glottis produced sounds
in the manner of a bow drawn across the strings of a
violin.  One of Ferrein's supporters, the physician
Hneri-Joseph-Bernard Montagnat, challenged Vaucanson
and Castel to resolve the disputre with a functional
mechanical model ....  Although no evidence exists
showing that Vaucanson took up the matter, Doyon and
Liaigre believe that 'le climate intellectual et
philosophique' would have dictated Vaucanson's
involvement."  (pp. 184-5)

Doyon, Andre and Lucien Liaiagre.
   Jacques Vaucanson, mecanicien de genie.
   Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1966.

Mersenne, Le Cat, La Mettrie (p. 184)

Etienne-Jules Marey (pp. 185-6)

"With the speaking machines of the late eighteenth
century, one is able to leave behind rumors and
guesses and to discuss devices whose existence can be
shown with certainty.  Between 1770 and 1790, four
persons--the abbe Mical, Christian Gottlieb
Kratzenstein, Wolfgang von Kempelen, and Erasmus
darwin--produced functional speaking machines. 
Strangely, all of them worked in diverse parts of
Europe with no apparent knowledge of each other" (p.
186)

"In the late 1830s [Charles] Cagniard [de la Tour]
constructed several rubber models of the larynx.... 
One of Cagniard's demonstrations involved what is
possibly the most convenient piece of scientific
apparatus ever conceived: his 'digito-buccal.'  He
simply blew through two fingers pressed against his
lips." (p. 199)

"... copying the manifest appearance of the organs of
speech was the ultimate end of the French physiologist
Georges Rene Marie Marage ....   Imitating the exact
shape of the vocal cavity became the guiding principle
of his work....  He belived that his artificial larynx
should replicate the phonautograph results, and he
crafted sirens for this purpose.  Marage's resonant
cavities exactly copied the shape of the oral cavity. 
In fact, they were cast from molds of the mouth,
complete with lips and teeth."  (pp. 210-1)

"Fig. 8.19.  Marage's siren with buccal resonators. 
>From Marage, Petit manuel de physiologie de la voix,
p. 93." (p. 212)

And see as well ...

Connor, Steven.  Dumbstruck: A Cultural History
   of Ventriloquism.  New York: Oxford UP, 2000.

Lastra, James.  Sound Technology and the
   American Cinema: Perception, Representation,
   Modernity.  New York: Columbia UP, 2000.

Okay, a quick one, and then ...

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