before us here on BBC Radio 4 Lucy
Hawking traces the development of speech
speech synthesis in Platts last tapes a
lot will be that is the question my name
is Lucy Hawking and I have been
regularly chatting to a user of speech
technology my father Stephen for the
past 28 years I write adventure stories
for primary aged children about
astronomy astrophysics and cosmology and
when I go to schools I always talk about
my father's used to speech technology
and I tell the kids that even though my
father may sound robotic when I play
them a clip of him talking I asked them
to remember that actually it's a real
man talking to them and it's a man who's
using a computer to give himself back
the voice that his illness has taken
away from him development of speech
synthesizers won the voter of Homer
Dudley 1939 will you please make a voter
safer our Eastern listeners
good evening radio audience to find out
where speech technology started I went
to Saarland University in Germany where
two researchers have built a model of
the first-ever voice machine it was
originally created in the 18th century
by inventor scientist and impresario
Wolfgang von Kempelen
thank you very nice to meet you my name
is Jurgen truven I'm a lecturer and
researcher here at the part of
completely statistics and phonetics
Salant University and I am so interested
in the history of speech communication
devices like the one from Kempelen for
example Kaplan was both a good showman
and a very good scientist but he was
really like a sort of a genius a real
engineer because he was interested in
building things which can function and
can help also people my name is haben
park Alan what do you think the
relationship was between von kempelen's
original inspiration and the organ it's
a very curious thing because there is a
stop and the pipe organ called a Vox
Humana
and when this stop was invented in the
17th century it should be a
representation of the human voice
playing the organ so they wanted to take
the Vox Humana from a musical note
something you'd find in compositions at
the time to actually be able to produce
human speech that exactly
yes but Kempelen knew very well that
this stop couldn't be the solution to
get a speech synthesis three had the
parametric artificial talker of Walter
Lawrence 1953 and so we're looking at
Vaughn a mother of von Kempelen speech
machine the door of which has just
fallen off it looks like it looks like a
small bird house
yes I'm taking the lid of the box which
houses
each machine and soon variants putting
one hand through one hole with his elbow
on the bellows which represent the lungs
other hand coming underneath the rubber
cone which what does that I became
represent the mole I mouse it sounds a
bit hand under the mouthpiece so it's
this other both best words you see good
say so you have the nose to be holding
so Fabian is moving his hand rapidly
over the mouthpiece and using two
fingers over the the nostrils
effectively while pressing down with his
elbow on the lungs
Fabian is actually mouthing the words
mama and papa while the machine is
saying them the UBA cascade Foreman
synthesizer of growing our fund 1953
should we see we see perhaps I can laugh
yes your instructor right if you want to
say it and you have to close the mouth
and the no stress have to be opened and
if you want to say we have to move the
hand backwards
so just ma ma Y pressing though did that
were three syllables I'll try to this
time right and what about Papa have it
the same way but you have to close the
nostrils
let's see if I can just do it with two
syllables this time is can I get her to
say anything else oh can I will I would
I be able to make it if you don't cover
the mouth it's an a and the more you
cover the mouth the the vowel quality
changes
knew that the missing of the tongue was
very important thing and in his book he
wrote to his readers to invent this
machine for what but nobody could invent
it with the town with keys so that it
could speak more and this few very few
things it seems to me that his aim was
actually to give a voice to people who
didn't speak and so he must have hoped
for further development of his machine
because he can't have imagined that it
would just be mama and papa all those
short sentences he must have had in mind
this idea that people will be able to
speak freely
mechanically and there was a plea in
that book far beyond mentioned please
read out that means researchers in the
late for the later generations please go
on with the development of that machine
so we are still trying to do that yet 16
output from the first computer-based
phonemic synthesis by rural program
created by John Kelly and Louis Kurtzman
1961 will be or not to be that is the
question it would be really nice to get
a sense of the progression from
mechanical to electrical to computer
solutions to providing us a voice for
people who can't speak I'm not sure
whether that was actually actually a
smooth transition from mechanical
systems like a fancam plants to the
first electrical ones I only know that
all of a sudden but that's how it looks
my name is band Mobius I am the
professor of phonetics and phonology at
Salam's University in the 1930s there
was an electrical system around the
so-called voter built by Homer Dudley
that was demonstrated at the word World
Fair in in New York
I believe 1937 example Helen will you
have the voters say she saw me that
sounded awfully flat how about a little
expression say the sentence in answer to
these questions whose are you whom did
she say me how did she see you or hear
you during the demonstration at the
world fair there was a female operator
of the system who played the device a
little bit like like a church organ
about how long did it take you to become
an expert in operating the voter it took
me about a year of constant practice
this is about the average time required
in most cases
the floor next to the top the top floor
yeah I'm now just getting into an
elevator which apparently I can talk to
so does it speak English hopefully years
okay oh hello elevator you must be
patient the third floor third floor okay
nineteen rules to control a low
dimensionality articulatory model my
Cecil Coker
1968 the track breaking the you are
related to the right machine
I'm a phallus attic and I'm a PhD
student and working in articulatory
synthesis the actual situation right now
is that it's very hard to simulate
women's voices because they have
slightly different characteristics and
if you just tuned up the f0 the
fundamental frequency or the pitch for
the voice it starts sounding really
artificial and what you actually have to
do you have also to alter the
articulation so in our when I or when we
speak in our it's different from a male
long vocal tract ah so you have you
cannot easily interpolate the
articulation because of course it would
be awful for women not only to be using
a speech synthesizer but then to be
coming out with a man's voice yeah I
mean that would constitute that would be
a real loss of identity yeah exactly
this is the result of trying to imitate
a female voice by increasing the pitch
20 for the first full text-to-speech
system done in Japan's by Noriko new
Maeda Adel 1968 local time there is
nothing else
Willian ahead loyalty though but I think
it's also important to think of children
for example growing up and of course at
the beginning to speak with an adult's
voice even the sex would be the same
would be awful I think definitely very
important just for making friends
it's me very hard for a child speaking
with an adult's voice to actually
communicate with kids of their own age
but at the moment we don't know very
much about the speaking voice of
children coming and adults for example
what's really happening during a
maturation of the vocal folds so the aim
is to create speech machines which can
grow up with somebody that would be
really nice then you would have shown a
real knowledge about what's going on in
your voice during a life span at least
of the first safe 20 years or so
twenty-one sentence-level phonology
incorporated in rules by Dennis Klatt
1976 with the life of charisma we'll all
through the house not a creature was
stirring not even a mouse
people people who don't maybe know who
Dennis Klatt is could you put him in
context yeah he's definitely one of the
pioneers of speech synthesis in the
technological sense but also in
providing an interface for non-experts
who could basically type in text and get
synthetic speech out of the system which
wasn't possible before I think before
class you would actually have to be a
specialist in order to be able to input
what you wanted to say okay Laura can
you can you hear me I can't hear you can
you hear me yes I've got you that was
fantastic
this is dr. Laura fine the daughter of
Dennis Klatt Dennis Klatt is really the
father of the modern speech machine
he created Dec talk a system which takes
text inputted by the user and turns it
into speech Dennis Klatt also produced
the definitive history of speech devices
which includes a collection of
recordings of each device throughout the
20th century
he really was interested in making a
natural and intelligible system so the
most important qualities of a speech
synthesis system are really the
naturalness and the intelligibility and
he was very much interested in making
those of high-quality one of the unique
contributions was that he used not only
his understanding from an engineering
standpoint and a speech production
standpoint but he also asked for
analysis with perception data how do
people interpret speech and what is it
in the listener that helps them
determine is this a child is this a
female is this a male what cues are
important and that really helped him to
make an intelligible system that
incorporated different age speakers and
different genders
my mother came across this drawing that
my father made of the different speakers
in the center we have perfect Paul this
is a picture of my father I am perfect
Paul the standard male voice and then
this is beautiful Betty which is the
standard female voice and that is a
picture that he drew of my mother I am
beautiful Betty the standard female
voice some people think I sound a bit
like a man the kid who's a 10 year old
child so this is a picture of me my name
is Kate the kid and I am about 10 years
old with my nice short haircut I was a
lab brat as a child I spent a lot of
time at MIT my father had a candy drawer
I spent hours with him at MIT in his
laboratory and he took snippets of my
voice and that helped to develop the
child's voice I love that they're called
the deck talk gang the deck top game
that's a great that's a great title so
there's my father in later years and
underneath the caption says huge hairy
kind of older gentleman's voice I am
huge very a very large person with the
deep voice I can serve as an authority
figure though I have to tell you
something perfect pool sounds just like
my dad I mean I think that's amazing
he's perfect Paul based on your father's
voice yes which which therefore means
that my father is actually speaking with
your father's voice that's amazing he
would be so so thrilled I think one of
the things that strikes me about your
father is is his humanity and he was
obviously an amazing scientist who yet
managed to do something that has had a
very profound impact on people's
day-to-day lives but also that he had
quite a sense of humor he did is it true
that he gave his synthesize of the
ability to sing happy birthday to you he
did happy birthday to
ooh happy birthday to you one of the
ironies is as a 40 year old man he began
to be somewhat hoarse because he had
thyroid cancer and he had had a
thyroidectomy but his vocal cords were
affected by the disease and so he spoke
in later years with a raspy voice and I
think he understood all too well your
father's challenges in terms of
communication so he had a real sense
himself of what it would actually be
like to find that you had no voice yes
my father unfortunately passed away at
age 50 way too young but he and he knew
that he had a terminal illness really
when I was quite young he knew that he
would not be around perhaps to see me
graduate from college but he was always
so optimistic I think it's been such an
amazing experience for me to talk to you
about how your father's life has been
transformed by my father's research and
I had never really thought before that
my father's voice lives on
33 the clap talk system by Dennis Klatt
of MIT which formed the basis for
Digital Equipment corporations
Dec talk system 1983 according to the
American speech and Hearing Association
there are over 1 million people in the
United States who are unable to speak
for one reason or another
I will show you the way that you can
write using my eyes and burst when
people meet me as someone who is unable
to speak they seem to assume that you
have some form of mental deficiency this
is Michael Kubus and Michael lost his
voice from a stroke some years ago some
people will talk to me as if I have a
learning disability I find this quite
funny as some of the members in the most
ridiculous way some of them catch on
fairly fast and realized that I'm
perfectly sane
others continued you and this way though
which is funny and completely bizarre
people who are quite anxious about how
to approach someone with a disability
and in and that's what Michael does he
puts people at their ease you know so it
is easy to communicate with him McDonagh
good speciality is in our gaze
technology and that means using the
movement of the eye in order to generate
text which can then be turned into
speech could you explain a bit more to
us about gaze control about the kind of
technology that we have just had a
conversation with Michael user it's a
system is based on a very powerful
camera system combined with low-level
infrared lights the actual technology
has been around probably two or three
decades but the significant change
that's happened this century is that
systems began to cope with significant
involuntary movement that means that the
significant numbers of people with
cerebral palsy for example who have
involuntary movement suddenly that group
of people were able to use the system
people with LSU have involuntary
movement
eleven the de vil articulatory
synthesizer developed by George Rosen at
MIT 1958 a when I first tried might have
been eye gaze technology we used it just
a lowercase system and Michael was very
unhappy about that he was insistent that
I put capital letters full stops commas
semicolons because it's really important
for him to show everyone that here's a
fully literate guy who is able to speak
independently and at the highest
literacy level hmm I wonder if you could
tell us a bit about how you see the
future of this technology developing I'm
just and it's being an advisor for a
European project on brain computer
interfaces and disability and for me
it's like that's a technology that
excites me because for those people who
are completely locked in who can't even
move their eyes then there is no other
way to go other than to use a brain
computer interface at the moment you
know that it's kind of inconvenient
because for the best signal well in fact
for the best signal you need an implant
but the second best signal is to
actually wear a cap and for that to have
gel on it etc but there are various dry
caps being developed that have a
reasonable signal as I understand it I'm
always asked how to talk to my father
and it would be great to know what
advice you would give to people who are
not familiar with speech machines but
who would like to have a conversation
with you I would ask them not to ask
long questions and be patient because it
can take a long time to answer also
please bear in mind that it can be very
tiring for those using speech output
devices
the question of whether I would change
my voice given the opportunity is a
difficult one and I suddenly have an
opportunity this is acclaimed filmmaker
Simon fitzmorris who has lost his voice
through MND this voice my voice as a
generic one that came with the computer
turning an Irish man into an American
overnight but it has become my voice
yeah this is actually something that we
have in mind as a real application for
for people who know that there is a
chance that they will lose their voice
to record themselves such that the
experts will be able to build speech
synthesizer that has a person's voice
there are two key issues and the
question of changing my voice what I
think about my voice and what knows
closest to me think and feel about my
voice and I can tell you what my
children feel straightaway they find the
idea of me changing my voice completely
abhorrent
just recently I was testing out another
computer when I glimpsed out of the
corner of my eye my two middle boys
standing outside the door their heads
close together whispering they are four
and six years of age they are whispering
and looking in my direction it turns out
they are discussing the strange is
always coming out of this different
computer later back on my own computer
it's bedtime and rape my six year old
comes to give me a kiss I type up
goodnight on my screen no say it I say
it goodnight he turns to his brother at
the door you see I told you it's the
same someone's voice is part of their
identity integral to their perceived
makeup it's funny though I feel this
protective of my computer voice than
others probably because my voice inside
my head is what is familiar to me my
thoughts not the voice that expresses
them
recently I came across a video on
YouTube brother doctor in Sweden with
motor neurone disease and there it was
my voice out of someone else's computer
identical it was a little unnerving so I
decided to see if I could get some
semblance of my old spoken voice back
uniquely mine I've been working with a
company in Edinburgh say RIP Rock a
world leaders in synthetic speech who
have built a synthetic voice out of old
recordings of my spoken voice I was
lucky enough to have the recording of me
reading some of my poetry and other
recordings however because of the lack
of data in comparison to someone who
would deliberately Bank their voice my
synthetic voice is limited by the amount
of original material and as a solution
syrup iraq are now in the process of
using my father's voice as a similar
source from which to fill in the missing
DNA and to build a harmonious rounded
voice harmonious branded voice by weight
the right way the results of West
Chandra main question remain will I
change my voice when I change my voice
and more importantly will my children
relate where my children allow it the
MIT my talk system by Jonathan Ellen
sherry Hunnicutt and Dennis Klatt 1979
speech is so familiar a feature of daily
life that we rarely pause the defiant
end of the demonstration these
recordings were made by Dennis Klatt on
November 22nd 1986 amazingly we've
progressed from von kempelen's 18th
century machine which had a limited
vocabulary to being able to recreate the
exact voice that was lost and give it
expression meaning and modulation in a
way that mimics the naturally produced
voice soon speech technology users will
be able to make their voices smile class
capable is presented by Lucy Hawking the
recordings were made of a
by the acoustical Society of America a
the sound design was by Nick Romero how
are you I dug it was produced by Julian
Mayer's
it was a sweet-talked production for BBC
Radio 4 thank you for listening and good
luck on all your cosmic journeys