WEBVTT 00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:30.160 Who saw you? 00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:32.320 SHE saw me. 00:00:31.929 --> 00:00:33.200 Whom did she see? 00:00:34.880 --> 00:00:35.200 She saw ME. 00:00:34.890 --> 00:00:37.439 Did she see you or hear you? 00:00:40.079 --> 00:00:40.240 She SAW me. 00:00:40.090 --> 00:00:42.719 Now you have only heard the Voder speak in one voice. 00:00:42.719 --> 00:00:48.799 But the Voder has other voices which you can use when Ms. Harper makes a simple adjustment in his mechanism. 00:00:48.799 --> 00:00:52.479 Helen will you have the Voder say, greetings everybody? 00:00:52.479 --> 00:00:55.280 Greetings everybody. 00:00:55.130 --> 00:00:57.759 Now will you have him repeat that in a high voice? 00:01:00.079 --> 00:01:00.320 Greetings everybody. 00:01:00.090 --> 00:01:01.520 And now in his best bass. 00:01:01.619 --> 00:01:01.619 Greetings everybody. 00:01:17.359 --> 00:01:20.000 It is the summer of 1939. Somewhere a merging band is playing. 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:22.319 Diesel buses idle. 00:01:22.319 --> 00:01:26.319 Thousands of people are talking at once. 00:01:26.319 --> 00:01:28.799 This is the World's Fair. 00:01:29.359 --> 00:01:32.159 The World of Tomorrow. 00:01:32.159 --> 00:01:36.640 Everywhere you look, someone is staring at something. 00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:40.480 A wooden cabinet that shows moving pictures. 00:01:40.480 --> 00:01:44.640 A seven foot-tall robot that smokes cigarettes. 00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:47.120 It is all very loud. 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:56.480 Then you step out of the heat into the Bell Telephone pavilion, and the noise falls away. 00:01:56.480 --> 00:01:59.359 There is a stage. 00:01:59.359 --> 00:02:09.280 Behind the stage, a mural, three stories tall, shows a man's face in the Art Deco style. 00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:15.199 Its mouth wide open, sound waves rolling off his lips. 00:02:15.199 --> 00:02:21.039 And beneath that giant shouting man sits a woman. 00:02:21.039 --> 00:02:23.599 She is dressed impeccably. 00:02:23.599 --> 00:02:29.599 She sits with perfect posture at a wooden console that looks like a desk. 00:02:29.599 --> 00:02:35.360 Her hands rest on two small keyboards and her right foot rests on a pedal. 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:40.240 A man in a suit steps up to the microphone. 00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:45.120 He tells you that the machine in front of you is going to speak. 00:02:45.120 --> 00:02:48.000 Not a recording. 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:52.000 Not by passing air through a tube. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.960 There are no vibrating strings. 00:02:54.960 --> 00:03:00.400 This voice is made of nothing but electricity. 00:03:00.400 --> 00:03:03.759 He turns to the woman. 00:03:03.759 --> 00:03:07.520 And she makes the machine talk. 00:03:07.520 --> 00:03:14.080 I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is Found in the Machine. 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:20.319 I want you to try something. 00:03:20.319 --> 00:03:24.719 Put two fingers against your throat and say, ahhh. 00:03:24.719 --> 00:03:29.120 You can feel it buzzing. 00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:33.120 Keep going, but this time change the sound. 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:42.319 Ahhh-eee. The buzz in your throat didn't change, but everything else does. 00:03:42.319 --> 00:03:47.039 Your tongue moves, your jaw drops, your lips pull back. 00:03:47.039 --> 00:03:50.400 That buzz is your vocal folds. 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:53.120 Two small flaps of tissue. 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:57.039 That is the engine and everything above them. 00:03:57.039 --> 00:04:00.159 Your throat, your mouth, your nose. 00:04:00.159 --> 00:04:04.000 It's a room the buzz has to pass through. 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:11.280 And the shape of the room decides which parts of the buzz get louder and which parts get dampened. 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:15.120 You change the room, you change the sound. 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:23.680 The man who figured out how to build that room out of electricity did not want to build a talking machine. 00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:25.199 Not at first. 00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:30.319 Homer Dudley was a preacher's son from Virginia. 00:04:30.319 --> 00:04:34.240 He trained to be a school teacher and he was bad at it. 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:38.079 He could not keep a classroom quiet, so he quit. 00:04:38.079 --> 00:04:44.240 He went back to school for electrical engineering and got a job at Bell Telephone Laboratories. 00:04:44.240 --> 00:04:51.360 By the late 1920s, voices were traveling across the country on copper wire. 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:54.240 And copper wire has limits. 00:04:54.240 --> 00:04:56.480 A human voice is big. 00:04:56.480 --> 00:05:01.120 It's a messy signal, and every conversation takes up room. 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:06.480 Bell wanted to fit more conversations into their wires. 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:12.959 So around 1928, Dudley stopped asking how to carry a voice more faithfully. 00:05:12.959 --> 00:05:17.279 And instead, he started asking what a voice is made of. 00:05:17.279 --> 00:05:24.000 In his notes, he describes a person talking almost as if they were a piece of telephone equipment. 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:27.040 The brain writes the message. 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:29.519 The mouth and tongue shape it. 00:05:29.519 --> 00:05:37.040 And the buzz in the throat is just the carrier, the thing that gets the message from one head to another. 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:42.800 Once you see it that way, you can do something strange to a voice. 00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:45.439 You can start to take it apart. 00:05:45.439 --> 00:05:53.439 Dudley built a machine called the Vocoder, or the voice coder. 00:05:53.439 --> 00:06:01.279 You speak into one end, but instead of carrying your voice, the machine measures it. 00:06:01.279 --> 00:06:09.920 There's the pitch and how much energy is in the low frequencies, how much is in the high one. 00:06:09.920 --> 00:06:15.920 Just a handful of numbers changing slowly, like settings on a dial. 00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:19.279 Those numbers go down the wire. 00:06:19.279 --> 00:06:22.639 Not your voice, just the settings. 00:06:22.639 --> 00:06:32.079 On the other end, another machine makes its own buzz and applies your settings, and out comes something that sounds like you. 00:06:32.079 --> 00:06:46.000 And if the shape of the room is just a set of numbers, you can change the numbers. 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:48.079 Raise the pitch. 00:06:48.079 --> 00:06:54.079 Flatten it. You can build a voice that belongs to no one. 00:06:54.079 --> 00:07:04.959 When Bell started planning its pavilion for the fair, they wanted to show off the Vocoder. 00:07:04.959 --> 00:07:07.839 But there was nothing to see. 00:07:07.839 --> 00:07:13.920 A voice goes in one side and something like a voice comes out the other. 00:07:13.920 --> 00:07:20.560 Standing next to the smoking robot, it was not something that would draw a crowd. 00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:23.600 So someone had an idea. 00:07:23.600 --> 00:07:30.639 What if you threw away the half that listens and keep only the half that speaks? 00:07:30.639 --> 00:07:38.879 So instead of having a machine set the dials, you could put a person at the controls instead. 00:07:38.879 --> 00:07:49.120 A person could learn to press keys to make the room the right shape, and then play it like an organ or something. 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:51.600 But there was a problem. 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:58.079 The instrument didn't exist yet, and no one knew how to play it. 00:07:58.079 --> 00:08:06.560 In the summer of 1937, Bell brought ten women from its transcription department into the lab. 00:08:06.560 --> 00:08:10.079 Typists and stenographers. 00:08:10.079 --> 00:08:12.399 That seemed promising. 00:08:12.399 --> 00:08:14.879 The prototype did have keys. 00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:22.480 The engineers judged two of the ten to be, and this is their word, unsuited. 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:29.839 The other eight weren't considered especially promising either, though two or three might improve with time. 00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:34.559 But while the women were learning the machine, the machine was learning them. 00:08:34.559 --> 00:08:37.919 The keys were too far apart. 00:08:37.919 --> 00:08:40.320 Several of the women said so. 00:08:40.320 --> 00:08:43.600 The keys traveled too far when you pressed them. 00:08:43.600 --> 00:08:49.200 An engineer wrote in his notes that the operators might do better if they didn't have to press so much. 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:51.279 And then there was the pedal. 00:08:51.279 --> 00:08:53.840 It controlled pitch. 00:08:53.840 --> 00:08:58.320 If you wanted a voice to go up, what does your foot do? 00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:00.639 Do you press it down? 00:09:00.639 --> 00:09:04.399 Or does it make more sense to lift it? 00:09:04.399 --> 00:09:11.120 The machine was still being invented around the bodies of the people who were learning to use it. 00:09:11.120 --> 00:09:16.960 When it was finished, Belle went looking for the women who could master it. 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:22.000 Not typists this time, but telephone operators. 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:26.000 Around 320 of them tried. 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:35.440 These were women who spent their days at switchboards, pulling and plugging in thick cables, connecting one voice to another. 00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:41.759 They were trained to be clear, to be pleasant, and to disappear. 00:09:41.759 --> 00:09:45.039 Twenty-four women were selected. 00:09:45.039 --> 00:09:48.720 The press called them girls. 00:09:48.720 --> 00:09:51.440 The telephone girls. 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:54.879 But eventually they did have a name. 00:09:54.879 --> 00:09:56.799 They were called the Voderettes. 00:09:56.799 --> 00:10:06.000 And the one at the front of the room, the one who would train the rest, was Helen Harper. 00:10:06.100 --> 00:10:06.100 Ms. Harper I've been wondering whether our listeners realize how many motions you have to make in the production of a single word. Can you give us some idea? 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.240 Well for example in producing the word concentration on the Voder I have to form thirteen different sounds in succession, make five up and down movements of the wrist bar, and vary the position of the foot pedal from three to five times according to what expression I want the Voder to give the word. 00:10:11.279 --> 00:10:18.080 There were ten white keys, one for each finger that shaped the vowel. 00:10:18.080 --> 00:10:22.480 Three black keys for the hard sounds. 00:10:22.480 --> 00:10:25.840 The P, the D, the K. 00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:29.360 A bar under her left wrist. 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:32.559 Push it one way and the machine buzzes. 00:10:32.559 --> 00:10:35.759 Push it the other way and it hisses. 00:10:35.759 --> 00:10:40.559 Buzz is a voice and a hiss is a breath. 00:10:40.559 --> 00:10:46.879 Every S, every F, every whispered word is a hiss. 00:10:46.879 --> 00:10:52.639 And her right foot was on a pedal, raising and lowering the pitch. 00:10:52.639 --> 00:10:56.000 Without the pedal, every sentence is flat. 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:00.399 The pedal is the difference between a statement and a question. 00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:03.279 Between calm and afraid. 00:11:03.279 --> 00:11:07.919 To say one word, she has to take it apart in her head. 00:11:07.919 --> 00:11:10.559 Separate the breath from the voice. 00:11:10.559 --> 00:11:21.039 Send the vowels to her fingers, the breath to her wrist, feeling to her foot, and do it all in the time that it takes to say a word. 00:11:21.039 --> 00:11:27.039 The Voderettes practiced for three hours a day. 00:11:27.039 --> 00:11:30.240 They had lessons several times a week. 00:11:30.240 --> 00:11:34.240 And they did this for more than a year. 00:11:34.240 --> 00:11:42.080 They had to first learn single sounds, and then they had to learn to put them next to each other. 00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:47.679 Because a T sounds different before an E than before an O. 00:11:47.679 --> 00:11:50.879 And the women had to learn to hear that. 00:11:50.879 --> 00:11:56.720 They had to hear the sounds that we swallow and the ones that we barely notice. 00:11:56.720 --> 00:12:00.559 They learned to make the voice whisper. 00:12:00.559 --> 00:12:03.679 They learned to make it sound old. 00:12:03.679 --> 00:12:11.919 By the time Helen Harper sat down under the shouting man, she could make it say a sentence in French. 00:12:11.919 --> 00:12:14.799 She could make it moo like a cow. 00:12:14.799 --> 00:12:17.440 And she could make it sing. 00:12:47.360 --> 00:12:47.679 Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be forgot in the days of auld lang syne? 00:12:47.370 --> 00:12:49.600 The fair closed in October of 1940. The pavilion came down. 00:12:49.600 --> 00:12:55.279 The console was packed away. 00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:58.960 Homer Dudley went back to the lab. 00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:05.120 But the idea of the voice as a set of numbers, it went to war. 00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:11.440 Bell used it to scramble the telephone calls between Roosevelt and Churchill. 00:13:11.440 --> 00:13:19.120 Dudley worked on that too, alongside a young British mathematician named Alan Turing. 00:13:19.120 --> 00:13:42.799 The machine didn't quite make it into the archive. 00:13:42.799 --> 00:13:46.000 None of the consoles survived. 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:54.399 Somewhere between 1940 and now, in one move or another, the desks with the keyboards got lost. 00:13:54.399 --> 00:14:04.480 But in December 2015, in a storage room in Warren, New Jersey, archivists uncovered two tall equipment racks. 00:14:04.480 --> 00:14:09.919 They were the practice units, the ones the women had learned on. 00:14:09.919 --> 00:14:15.519 The thing she performed on was gone, but the thing she practiced on was found. 00:14:15.519 --> 00:14:17.919 And then there's Helen. 00:14:17.919 --> 00:14:25.360 In September of 1941, a newspaper reported that she was retiring from operator work. 00:14:25.360 --> 00:14:31.679 She was already married, and now she told the reporter she was going to make marriage her career. 00:14:31.679 --> 00:14:34.799 She had made a scrapbook, though. 00:14:34.799 --> 00:14:40.240 More than a hundred pages of memories about playing the Voder. 00:14:40.240 --> 00:14:46.559 I don't know what happened to Helen's scrapbook, and I don't know what she put on those pages. 00:14:46.559 --> 00:14:51.039 But when she left, she had gathered something she wanted to keep. 00:14:51.039 --> 00:15:05.840 Every voice you hear from a machine today, the one that reads you directions, the one that can say your grandmother's name is lifeless. 00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:15.200 But the Voder sat there humming until a woman put her hands on it. 00:15:15.200 --> 00:15:20.399 Back in the pavilion, the crowd is laughing. 00:15:20.399 --> 00:15:24.240 The machine has just said good afternoon. 00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:29.360 Someone in the crowd asks it to say it again, but sadder this time. 00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:35.600 Helen changes the pressure on her foot, and it does. 00:15:35.600 --> 00:15:42.879 Above her, the painted man is shouting, and her mouth is closed. 00:15:42.879 --> 00:15:50.639 I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is Found in the Machine. 00:15:50.639 --> 00:16:00.720 Today's episode was brought to you exclusively by our founding Patreon members. 00:16:00.720 --> 00:16:09.440 You can go to found in the machine.com /support to find our Patreon and other ways you can support the show. 00:16:09.440 --> 00:16:18.639 And I can't tell you how much I would appreciate a rating or a review wherever you listen to this show. 00:16:18.639 --> 00:16:25.919 Thanks so much for listening.