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?"
This may be a reference to it (Score:3, Interesting)
Buy it? You gonna display it publicly? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This site describes the machine (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember playing with that machine way back in the early days of the science centre - I didn't think anybody else on the planet even remembered it.
I doubt that Philips would have done a one off project like that - it probably would have been subcontracted to a small, local engineering firm.
Don't think it will help, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The part of Philips that was into speech synthesis and recognition went through many different incarnations until it became part of Nuance.
Amarok (Score:2, Interesting)
In Amarok by Mike Oldfield, there's a bit that repeatedly goes "COFFEE, CO CO COFFEE" in weird a synthy voice. Is that related or a coincidence?
Re:Amarok (Score:1, Interesting)
I believe the robotic voice says "Happy?" in Amarok, not "Coffee". This goes along with it being the final album that got Mike out of his contract with Virgin Records, the album deliberately crashing from one tune to another so that a single couldn't be cut from it, and the "FUCK OFF RB" (Richard Branson, boss of Virgin) in morse code on the trumpet. See this excellent analysis [tubular.net] for more.
Re:Buy it? You gonna display it publicly? (Score:3, Interesting)
If I could get a schematic and parts list, I'd build one and most likely post the PCB trace print or make PCBs available. Maybe Sparkfun or Make Magazine would be a good place.
This museum had a lot of cool stuff that would be considered trivial knowledge these days. Another really neat one was the thing used to demonstrate connected logic gate systems. It was made of an array of clear tubes at the top that would feed into large AND and OR gate symbols, perhaps other types of gates, I don't recall. You'd flip a bunch of toggle switches to configure which tubes would be fed with a ping-pong ball. Then the gate array would "process" the binary word. The goal was to get a ping-pong ball bit to appear at the one tube at the bottom. Fun stuff.
Re:This site describes the machine (Score:4, Interesting)
I emailed Professor Csele and he is alive and well. I mentioned this posting but did not inquire about the coffee machine. I inquired about his reconstruction of a 1969 laser system and requested if he could scan or otherwise digitize the schematic. There's a schematic on a fragile piece of paper he has that I'd like to see others get some benefit from. I'd also like to seen the odd ball logic system of that laser as it's one I've not heard of before.
He has a keyword spam bypass, it's on the webpage.
Same experience, different display (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I found it! (Score:1, Interesting)
Ha! I get it! If you Google the name you discover its T-Pain's real name. He of singing through Autotune fame. Sounds just like the vocoders of old.
Re:Tracks Ontarians in a crowd! (Score:1, Interesting)
Such memories. I lived in the Toronto suburbs, and the Science Centre was my FAVORITE place in the entire world. I wanted to LIVE there. (According to my parents, I once said that school was a waste of time, and that I should just go to the Science Centre, or the Royal Ontario Museum, every day instead). One of the greatest moments in my life was learning enough about Toronto's transit and suburban rail system so that at the age of 11, I could get from Oakville out to the Science Centre on my own, and stay all day if I wanted.
I used to visit three or four times a year until the late 1980s. At that point, I think they were having a serious budget crunch, and a lot of the classic exhibits were starting to break down. I guess it's also true that a lot of the exhibits in the communication section (like the COFFEE machine, and the tic-tac-toe playing computer) were starting to look rather obsolete in the face of the advent of PCs, and perhaps felt a bit old fashioned to some younger visitors. I can still remember making my first steps onto the internet at the Science Centre in the early nineties, on an extremely early version of Netscape Navigator. I still take my son to the Science Centre at least once a year, and he loves its modern incarnation. But I have to admit that I'm nostalgic for the older version of my youth. If I had a time machine conveniently available, one of my stops would certainly be the Science Centre some time in the early seventies -- in particular the communications section, and the COFFEE machine.