Information On Philips' "Coffee" Machine? 168
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by
timothy
from the delicious-obscurities-in-your-cranium dept.
from the delicious-obscurities-in-your-cranium dept.
RogueWarrior65 writes "In the early 1970s, I was fortunate to discover the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. For the Gen Y'ers out there who never knew a world without computers, to Gen X'ers, this place was the future. Computer technology was just beginning to be exposed to the world and this museum had the coolest exhibits around, most of which were interactive. One of the exhibits was a machine reminiscent of an old vending machine. On its face was a large circuit board with lights that spelled out the word 'coffee.' There were several dials and a button, which, when pressed, would cause the machine to speak the word. The knobs adjusted various inflections and tonal qualities of the speech. Feeling nostalgic, I inquired of the museum about this exhibit. Was it still there? If not, was it in storage somewhere and could I purchase it. I was told that the machine was developed by Philips Electronics but the exhibit was no longer in their collection. Then I asked Philips about it and was told that no, they have nothing in the archives, no schematics or parts list. A Google search is came up empty as well. Does anyone have any more information on this gadget?"
Vocoder? (Score:1, Informative)
Sounds a little like a vocoder [wikipedia.org].
This site describes the machine (Score:5, Informative)
See Evoluon website (Score:5, Informative)
Also (Score:2, Informative)
Also, check out this dutch forum ( Google Translation [google.com] ) for more info and pics.
Re:video link evoluon machine in action (Score:2, Informative)
Right at the end of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-_pZV3tDiw
Re:video link evoluon machine in action (Score:2, Informative)
evoluon (Score:5, Informative)
the machine was designed by philips and shown in the evoluon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluon and http://www.evoluon.org/ ). you can find a little clip of it on youtube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-_pZV3tDiw ) @ 6:55 and forward...
for me it was heaven as a kid... spending hours at that place... loved it!
Re:This site describes the machine (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Vocoder? (Score:5, Informative)
It had four distinct circuits, one for each phoneme ("C", "O", "FF" and "EE"), and a sequencer. You could vary the timing of the whole thing, and the individual frequencies of the phonemes. The "C" and "FF" sounds had a lot of white noise, with the "C" (well, "K") more plosive. The "O" and "EE" were purer waves, each a mix of two frequencies (which could be tweaked). Shorten the sequence timing and increase the frequency of that last "EE" phoneme and it sounded more like "KOFEEP?"
It wouldn't be too hard to reproduce the circuitry -- a handful of tunable oscillators, a couple of noise sources, and a sequencer -- but I think the questioner is more interested in an exact, not just functional, replica.
Re:video link evoluon machine in action (Score:2, Informative)
Rather 06:59, unless the head 2-3 seconds before is part of it to.
Re:This site describes the machine (Score:2, Informative)
For shizzle my nizzle! Keep laying down the skinny for them fools.
Re:Also (Score:4, Informative)
Translation from someone fluent in dutch but less so in english:
"Several times a day the museum atttendants performed (using a checklist) a systemetic check to find defective exhibitions, and believe me, they were there. They kept maintenance busy."
Anyway, the forum, while interesting for the stories and links, doesn't know where the thing is either. One poster even writes he contacted the museum and was told it was destroyed (sent to junkyard) but that comment is unsubstantiated.
Re:Vocoder? (Score:3, Informative)
I found it! (Score:2, Informative)
I think it originally came from the Netherlands (Score:4, Informative)
The UFO shaped Evoluon [evoluon.com] in Eindhoven had the same device, I remember playing with it in my youth. However, we're talking 40+ years ago (yes, I'm old), the UFO shaped building has changed from a Philips-sponsored exhibition [youtube.com] to a conference centre. Sniff.. Your coffee machine is at approx 7:12 in. It also showed those *beautiful* relays that were used for telephones..
It may be worth calling the Philips media representatives in Eindhoven and ask - I'm positive Philips will have the drawings stashed away somewhere. I have noticed some discussion about the specific machine on some Dutch forums (Google for "evoluon koffie" and you'll find them). Sorry, it's in Dutch..
Good luck, and thanks for bringing back those memories - while you're at it, ask them where the giant nixie tubes went!
Alas, the coffee machine is no more (Score:5, Informative)
The coffee machine was developed by the Philips NatLab ("Natuurkundig Laboratorium"), the research and development labs of Philips in Eindhoven. Two of them were made. It was an early experiment in speech synthesis. The machine has been in the Evoluon exhibition on permanent display from the beginning in 1966 until it was closed in 1989. It was very popular and many people would start imitating the machine whenever coffee was mentioned. When the Evoluon exhibition was dismantled, many displays were given away to museums around the world. The coffee machine that had been in the Evoluon was given to the Ontario Science Centre in Toronto. No modifications needed to be made to it, since the word 'coffee' in English sounds the same as the word 'koffie' in Dutch.
The question what happened to the machine often comes up. Last time it was mentioned, I was told the Ontario Science Centre had thrown away the machine when it was taken out of the exhibition. The second coffee machine was given to the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. I am told they have since thrown away this machine as well.
I was working on getting some of the displays that were given to Dutch museums back into the Evoluon for a remembrance event a few years ago, but all I could get was the Time display. Some displays are still shown in several Dutch museums, but most of them are either thrashed or unrecognizable changed.
It will be hard to find out who exactly designed the coffee machine. Many of the people who worked at the NatLab or the Evoluon in the sixties are no longer among us. The NatLab has been reorganized many times since then and a lot of documentation of the past is lost. It's the same problem with the Senster, the giant interactive robot at the entrance to the Evoluon. Only because the widow of the artist who designed it had kept a lot of papers, some headway could be made into discovering how it worked.
Thanks for Slashdotting my site. I feel really famous now :)
Kees
It's in storage... (Score:5, Informative)
COFFEE? video (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-_pZV3tDiw
At the end of the video you can see a demonstration of the machine.