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September 3, 2013 10:44 AM

Does anybody know or have any information on what happened to Theodore Huppinger's dictation machine from 1875?

Reading through an old newspaper, I came across a short news story about a dictation machine invented by Huppinger in 1875. Several publications ran the story, and the following is from the Operator:

APPARATUS FOR WRITING SPOKEN LANGUAGE.—The Welthandel mentions that Th. Huppinger, of Männerdorf, on the lake of Zürich, has invented an apparatus for writing oral language. The whole apparatus, which is about as large as the human hand, is so brought in contact with the mouth, that the least movement of the tongue, the lips, or the palate, &c., are conveyed to the writing mechanism of the apparatus in such a manner as to make the latter work. The writing alphabet used is similar to the telegraph alphabets, and consists of dots and strokes. Whilst the speaker is speaking an endless slip of paper passes off from the machine with a verbatim report. As this instrument merely renders by written signs the spoken language through the various movements of the mouth, independently of the sounds, the inventor believes it will prove of great value to reporters, since the latter by merely silently repeating the spoken words heard might immediately receive the speeches from the machine neatly stenographed. We (Iron), however, have our doubts of this machine as thus described.

I would like to know if this machine survives, or a better description of how it works, or even any recordings from it. Indeed, any information is welcome.

posted by Thing to Technology (5 answers total)

Huzzah. "theodore huppinger" is now a Googlewhack.

But seriously, how on earth would something like this work, anyway? Machine-reading lips is hard enough that modern computer software has difficulty with it, let alone some sort of mechanical linkage. (Unless, of course, our reporter was expected to 'speak' in some sort of code, which would rather obviate the utility of this device over a regular stenotype.)
posted by fifthrider at 11:00 AM on September 3, 2013

It's not clear from the quoted article if such a thing even existed in the first place, you may be looking at merely the description of what the device would be intended to do.
posted by yohko at 2:24 PM on September 3, 2013

There are multiple levels of difficulty here. First, was this a machine that existed and might do what the patent indicated? Or just a theoretical description? Second, did the newspaper understand either of these points, and if it did understand that general point, did it understand the description of how it worked? Third, are there any translation issues from the Welthandel (roughly, German for World Trade to the Operator?

The earliest precursors of office dictation devices did appear around this time, but they were purely sound recording devices, mostly using wax cylinder technology. Now, I can read that description as a somewhat confused interpretation of making a wax recording with a stylus. I can also read it as doing some sort of recording of the movements of the mouth, and playback being effectuated by encouraging the user's mouth to imitate the originally recorded movements, but I don't expect that would necessarily work all that well.

But if it's really describing some sort of typewritten transcription of oral language to something using a "writing alphabet", telegraphy-based or otherwise, it's probably just wishful thinking.

Anyway, if even a prototype had existed, I think it would have been better recognized by history, even if only as a curiosity.
posted by dhartung at 6:19 PM on September 3, 2013

Best answer: I'm pretty familiar with patents and other invention miscellania from that era, so I've gotten pretty good at reading between the lines. Admittedly I'm making a few guesses, but I've rebuilt a number of inventions from that time period:

1) I doubt if a working model was actually made. At that time claims made in periodicals were often wildly inflated, and never fact checked. Quoting a foreign news source is often an indicator that it was just made up. Searching for the article I found the article nearly verbatim – except for the name of the foreign publication which is different each time, and I couldn't prove any of those publications ever existed. That makes this article incredibly suspicious. (A huge percentage of science writing around this time were either disguised proposals by entrepreneurs to get funding for an idea, or just straight up hoaxes.)

I did a search of my usual resources for 19th c. inventions and came up with nothing, though the EU patent offices aren't readily searchable for patents that old.

2) If I had to build one from the description, I would approach it as a kind of complex pantograph. It would be a dental horror-show that goes in and around the mouth, with attachments or springs that press against the jaw, tongue, and lips. Consider it a cousin to the Psychograph. Movements of each one of these parts would be amplified and converted into pen movements – probably more than one pen – to create a graph of mouth movements. If it was built and did work, it would be uncomfortable to wear, tiring (not to mention gross after a few minutes of use) and require careful and deliberate enunciation to produce reliable drawings. Deciphering the output would be incredibly difficult, much more than simple Morse code. Despite the hyperbole in the article, there is absolutely no mechanical way to simplify the complex movements of the mouth into useful, simple output. It would be an alphabet of sorts, in that pronouncing the same word twice would produce the same drawings, but there would essentially be a different drawing for each word, making it harder to read than classical Chinese.
posted by Ookseer at 8:37 PM on September 3, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I should think you are quite right, this invention is the 1800s equivalent of vapourware. Oh well.
posted by Thing at 12:39 PM on September 4, 2013