“It would be a considerable invention indeed, that of a machine able to mimic speech, with its sounds and articulations. … I think it is not impossible.”

—  Leonhard Euler

La construction d'une machine propre à exprimer tous les sons de nos paroles , avec toutes les articulations , seroit sans-doute une découverte bien importante. … La chose ne me paroît pas impossible.
Letter to Friederike Charlotte of Brandenburg-Schwedt (16 June 1761)
Lettres à une Princesse d'Allemagne sur différentes questions de physique et de philosophie, Royer, 1788, p. 265
As quoted in An Introduction to Text-to-Speech Synthesis (2001) by Thierry Dutoit, p. 27; also in Fabian Brackhane and Jürgen Trouvain "Zur heutigen Bedeutung der Sprechmaschine Wolfgang von Kempelens" (in: Bernd J. Kröger (ed.): Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung 2009, Band 2 der Tagungsbände der 20. Konferenz "Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung" (ESSV), Dresden: TUDpress, 2009, pp. 97–107)

Original

La construction d'une machine propre à exprimer tous les sons de nos paroles, avec toutes les articulations , seroit sans-doute une découverte bien importante. … La chose ne me paroît pas impossible.

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Leonhard Euler photo
Leonhard Euler 11
Swiss mathematician 1707–1783

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