Abstract
AN interesting lecture1 was recently delivered in the psychological institute of the University of Berlin by Prof. Scripture, of the University of Yale, whose investigations in phonetics are well known. Prof. Scripture's method is that first employed by Fleeming Jenkin and Ewing, and afterwards developed by Hermann, the writer and others, namely, to record on a moving surface, either by photography or by a direct system of levers, the curves imprinted by speech on the cylinder of a phonograph or on the disc of a gramophone. Dr. Scripture has recently improved the mechanism of his apparatus so as to obtain an amplification of the curves, about three times in the horizontal and three hundred times in the vertical direction, while the speed of the movement of his gramophone plate was reduced 126,300 times that at which it rotates during the acoustical reproduction of the sound. His curves have been submitted to analysis, and it shows the energy with which the research is being prosecuted when he is able to state that in America he has twenty persons engaged in this special bit of work.
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MCKENDRICK, J. Speech Curves . Nature 71, 250–251 (1905). https://doi.org/10.1038/071250a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/071250a0