摘要 |
Machine for converting a text printed in literal characters into speech, comprising means for converting each literal character into a corresponding binary-coded character, means for comparing groups of a variable number of successive ones of said coded characters and for deriving therefrom the phonetic equivalent of any such group in the form of a coded phoneme, and means including an address matrix for deriving from any two consecutively appearing such coded phonemes the address of a corresponding coded word assembly in a coded phoneme-pair spectrogram store. In the latter store, each spectrogram is written in the form of an assembly of binary-coded words, which represents in digitalized form the short-time spectrogram of a corresponding phoneme pair. As soon as the above-mentioned address is found, the proper word assembly is selected and extracted from the store, and the bits in said words are used to successively control in time the operation of a plurality of oscillators in number equal to that of said words in said assembly, while a sound-reproducing means is simultaneously fed from all of said oscillators. |