Machine Speak Ruggiero Leoncavallo, ‘Vesti la giubba’ (Pagliacci), I Pagliacci, Act I

Abstract

Papa—maman—ma femme—mon mari—a propos—Marianna—Roma—madame—la reine—le roi—a Paris—allons. These were among the first babbled words of Wolfgang von Kempelen’s speaking machine when it was exhibited in 1783. Kempelen’s design, which consisted of bellows that pumped air through trachea-like attachments, forsook its native German to speak largely in French. A contemporary observer remarked that, though the machine was clearly at an early stage of development, it gave a fairly accurate imitation of a five-year-old child, with only one minor speech impediment: ‘its voice is pleasant and sweet, only the R is pronounced gutturally and with a little rumbling’ (‘la voix en est agréable & douce, il n’y a que l’R qu’elle prononce en grasseyant & avec un certain ronflement’). Elsewhere, the machine seems to have made the most of a limited vocabulary by making friends, declaring love and hailing rulers of empires past and present.