| OCR Text |
Show Meet Mi?JIeleVmZi (fine s ' ' tfit fir V If jfM : :,:v . . f'M , tlR.TELEYOX, THE DRILLMASTEa MR..TELEVOX'S .LARYNX 7 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON W'L HERB ls in old story j about a man who went 61 to a circus, and when J he saw a giraffe for the first time In his f:Tar"T3Tl life, exclaimed : "There ain't no such animal. ! c:&t -t A few j-ears ago, If i y il you had told the aver-v-J age American that tliere could be developed devel-oped a mechanical "man" of steel ami Iron who could be told to perform per-form certain tasks and would do them, his reply would probably be similar to the exclamation of the old fellow who saw his first giraffe. And yet the Ingenuity of an American inventor in-ventor has developed such a man, but what is more remarkable still is the fact that he has given his automaton a "voice," and it can now "talk back!" If you are Inclined to say "There ain't 110 such man !" meet "Mr. Televox" and his inveutor, It. J. Wensley of the .Yestinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Manufac-turing company ! When Mr. Wensley first brought his mechanical "man" into being, all that "he" could do was to obey certain commands to accomplish certain specified speci-fied results, "lie" could be called upon up-on the telephone and would open and close switches and record the condi tion of instruments or mechanisms with ' which "lie" was connected. But now Mr. Wensley has given him a "larynx." and the process can be reversed, so that if a report becomes necessary "Mr. Tclevox's" mechanical arm lifts the receiver of a telephone and his "voice" says "Tins' is Televox calling Main G100." After the telephone connection con-nection is made, the "conversation" (albeit a prearranged one) is continued contin-ued until certain information is conveyed. con-veyed. As to how "Mr. Televox" has "found his voice," It can best be explained in the words of Mr. Wensley himself, who says: To pive the mechanism means for emitting articulate speech of good quality, use Is made of developments In the "talking movie" industry. A piece of moving picture film about 15 or 20 feet long is spliced to make an endless loop. In the present model two sentences are spoken. These are photographed near the two edges of the standard film, the rest of It being left blank. The sound appears In the form of closely spaced lines of various shades and widths and frequency. Individual In-dividual lamps with special straight filament are arranged with lenses to concentrate the light on a very nar- 9 4 Above: Mr. Wensley speaks with "Mr. Televox!" Like a perfect gentleman, gentle-man, the Westinghouse automaton responds re-sponds in a smooth, well-articulated voice. The ability to talk is newly acquired, ac-quired, for "Mr. Televox" is less than a year old. Unlike human beings, he has an external "larynx," which is the large box at the right.. The "vocal chord" is composed of voice oscillations oscilla-tions recorded on a movie film In the box. Lower left: (International News-reel News-reel Photo) "Mr. Televox" further demonstrated his manifold uses when he put a section of the First battalion, Sixteenth infantry, stationed at Governors Gov-ernors island, New York city, through a portion of the manual of arms recently. re-cently. Lower right: Here is the "larnyx" of "Mr. Televox," the Westinghouse mechanical man. Mr. Wensley, inventor inven-tor of the automaton, seems puzzled as he looks over the "vocal chord," which is nothing but a movie film of voice oscillations. Perhaps he wonders won-ders whether the language is absolutely absolute-ly fit and proper for reproduction before be-fore ladies. Or maybe he merely is wondering how he can get this huge "vocal organ" into the windpipe of "Mr. Televox." Unlike human beings, Mr. Televox never suffers from colds. j row portion of the film at any one time. A small motor drives the film whenever when-ever the voice is required. A selecting mechanism in the televox liphts either one of the two lamps depending upon the sentence desired. The image of tl e filament is projected through a narrow nar-row slot onto the speech record through which it passes to a photo-cell. A photo, cell passes current directly in proportion propor-tion to the amount of light falling on it. As the lines on the film pass in front of the light, the corresponding change of currents which take place in the photo-cell are amplified through a special shielded three stage amplifier ampli-fier to a volume sufficient to operate a small loud speaker. This speaker is placed in front of tke telephone transmitter trans-mitter and is heard by the person at the other end of the telephone line ex actly as though a human being were speaking the words Into the transmitter. trans-mitter. When a call Is put through to a substation sub-station equipped w.th a Televox having hav-ing this voice attachment, the person at the remote end will hear a voice saying, "Televox speaking at RandoUh 6400." This -will repeat a second time and if the proper signal ie not given by means of whistles or other musical devices, the Televox will then hang up the receiver upon the assumption that the call is a wrong number call. In the meantime the person at the distant end has heard the number of the telephone tele-phone to which he has been connected and should it be a wrong number, will be able to hang up and signal the operator op-erator again to get the correct number. num-ber. However, should the dispatcher have made this call with the expectation expec-tation of operating something in the cubstation, he listens for the voice and as soon as he has verified the correctness correct-ness of the number of the substation as indicated by the telephone number, he blows a blast on the proper whistle and the voice ceases and the machine is then in condition for further operation opera-tion by means of the whistle notes. Should a circuit breaker open automatically, auto-matically, the Televox is put into action ac-tion and lifts the receiver of the telephone tele-phone and immediately begins saying at intervals, "This is the Televox calling call-ing for Main 6000." This will be continued con-tinued at intervals until the central operator is able to complete the connection con-nection to the dispatcher's telephone. As soon as he hears this voice, he will step it by a blast of the proper whistle and then proceed to question the machine ma-chine by further whistles as to what nas happened. The answers to these questions will be In the buzzer code which the dispatcher understands. As soon as the whistle stops the voice, the motor is also stopped and the lamps extinguished so that th film is in use only a very short time. While the usefulness of "Mr. Televox" Tele-vox" is at present restricted to operation oper-ation in the field of telephony, this newest development has great significance. sig-nificance. For, as Mr. Wensley says, "The addition of this automatic voice I considerably broadens the possible field of application for the Televox. It is not limited to the speaking of the two sentences but may be made to answer quite a number of questions correctly when necessity for such answers an-swers has been determined in advance. For Instance, where it is not desired to use code signals Indicating the amount of water in the reservoir, this mechanism can be made to state the height of water in feet, or it can be made to say that Machine is cool or a machine is hot, or a machine is dan-gerousfy dan-gerousfy hot. It can be made to repeat re-peat any sort of routine report that can be selected by electrical circuits." Considering what has already been accomplished in the development of this automaton, it would be a rash person Indeed who would venture to predict now what the future limitations limita-tions in othlr fields of usefulness for "Mr. Televox" and his "children" will be. For, more and more, we are learning learn-ing how foolish Is any declaration of "It can't be done!" when American inventive in-ventive genius sets- about to prove that It can, no matter what "it" may be. |
