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Subject: Dead Media Working Note 05.0
Dead media: The Speaking Picture Book; squeeze toys that
'speak'
From Austex23_AT_aol.com (Bill Wallace)
Source: *Mechanical Toys* by Athelstan and
Kathleen Spilhaus, Random House, 1989, $7.99
ISBN 0-517-0560-4
"A most beautiful toy that demonstrates synthetic speech
is the Speaking Picture Book, made in Germany in 1895. The
mechanism, which produces nine different animal sounds,
consists of seven bellows with complicated flute pipes
with stops reminiscent of the Kratzenstein pipes. When
the cover is opened, one reads a verse about a cow, sees a
picture of it, and follows an arrow pointing to a string.
When the string is pulled, a realistic moo sounds out...
"...this Victorian toy, primitive though it is, is
probably still the best synthetic speech toy to reach the
market, and was certainly the predecessor of the Vocoder
and of modern electronic voice synthesizers."
There is also some discussion of toy animals that emit
accurate sounds when the toy is turned or squeezed --
crude examples can still be found today, but the variety
and accuracy of older specimens probably represent a lost
art.
My favorite toy of this kind is a 1940s piggy bank
designed for war-bond savings, bright yellow and painted
with Hitler's face. Whenever a coin was deposited, der
Fuhrer squealed.
Bill
Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |