Information On Philips' "Coffee" Machine? 168
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].
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It sounds less like a text-to-speech engine than a vocoder. Seems like a formant synthesizer with tunables hardcoded to produce the word coffee.
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.
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Now that's what I call "informative"
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This site describes the machine (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
Neither did I. That machine was a riot. What a blast from the past...
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For shizzle my nizzle! Keep laying down the skinny for them fools.
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Hey, you know what they say: see a broad to get dat booty yak 'em... ...leg 'er down a smack 'em yak 'em!
(Golly!)
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Don't panic everyone, I speak jive..
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Don't panic everyone, I speak jive..
|3\_/T d() j00 sp34k l33t? [megatokyo.com]
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Get a grip, daddyo.
Re:This site describes the machine (Score:4, Funny)
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My son just informed me of a new usage which he'd just heard, used to describe rotating a car in a circle whilst spinning the rear tires. A "Brodie". Who comes up with these things?
I told him that I'd used that one myself back in the '60s.
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I remember that machine well -- I must have spent well over an hour on it. I just didn't remember where it was. (I'd thought I'd seen it at one of the World's Fairs, and more probably New York in '65 than Montreal in '67. But it's possible it was at the Science Center -- unless they exhibited elsewhere before that.)
Speech technology was becoming fairly self-contained by mid-70s, so I thought it was quite a bit earlier.
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A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
How about a good game of chess?
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I watched WarGames last night (It was on THIS TV)
It was amazing - like stepping into a time warp. The mother's a real estate agent, she's on the phone talking about creative financing and a balloon payment in 5 years but who cares because you'll be able to refinance at that point ... and this was in 1983, a quarter-century before the real estate bubble meltdown.
War dialing....
Social engineering for logon info ...
"Hacking" the payphone (we did it without having to unscrew the mouth piece - I guess th
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Which TV?
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Good question.
http://www.thistv.com/ [thistv.com]
Prime example of a site screwed up by way too much flash.
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Re:This site describes the machine (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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That's cool too. IMHO, there's a demand for retro technology for a whole bunch of reasons. E.g. original Altair computers go for big bucks on Ebay.
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I like knowing how old tech works as best I can find out. There are several telephony technologies that you probably won't see in use again that to me are incredibly brilliant inventions with not a solid state component to them. This type of technology gets lost and forgotten as the digital age, while cleaver, allows 'old stuff' to rot away. Even google has lost a large chunk of the usenet archive it acquired and put online.
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Hell, people pay big bucks for tube audio amplifiers. I personally would be interested in a reproduction Enigma machine. My nostalgia for stuff like this has me looking at Altairs and IMSAI 8080 computers on Ebay. There's something cool about switches and lights. It's kinda the same with my appreciation of steampunk.
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Heh, a friend is building a steampunk AK but I pointed out to them it was a fake because it actually works. ;)
Sure (Score:5, Funny)
Sure you aren't thinking about a Tim Horton's drive thru?
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Tim Horton's is great. I wish they'd expand to California. It's astonishingly hard to find decent doughnuts in San Francisco.
We were visiting relatives in Canada, and they were amazed we'd never heard of Tim Horton's before. From what I saw, Tim Horton's outlets were more common than Starbuck's and MacDonald's combined.
See Evoluon website (Score:5, Informative)
Re:See Evoluon website (Score:5, Funny)
DOES NOT COMPUTE
Re:See Evoluon website (Score:5, Funny)
Why not ponder it over a cup of COFFEE.
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"DOES NOT COMPUTE"
Judging by the look on her face, I'd say she agrees... http://www.dse.nl/~evoluon/avscan5k.jpg [www.dse.nl]
Also (Score:2, Informative)
Also, check out this dutch forum ( Google Translation [google.com] ) for more info and pics.
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The translation leaves a bit to be desired:
"Several times a day suppositories made agreements with a checklist for a systematic check-ups failed to find, and believe me, they were there. Onderhoud had het er druk mee. Maintenance had it busy."
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.
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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
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Rather 06:59, unless the head 2-3 seconds before is part of it to.
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Haha I thought I was watching an episode of the Venture Brothers for a moment.
Go for super science!
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Re:See Evoluon website (Score:5, Funny)
This machine used to be on permanent display in the Evoluon, a museum dedicated to technology and modern art in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. See here [www.dse.nl]. This site is run by a man named Kees who may be able to answer your questions.
You would make a great NPC.
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NPC? (Score:2)
Nippon Precision Components?? It's the Netherlands, not Japan. Shirley you mean NXP....
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Bingo.
At 01:30 in this video, you get a short clip of the machine in action! It can be heard and plays again a few seconds later.
The video was found following links on the Evoluon website, so proof they once had it, at the very least.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KXTJ2vYwRM [youtube.com]
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Reply from Kees Stravers:
The Evoluon was a science museum run by the Philips corporation in
Eindhoven. Among it's many exhibitions was a speech synthesizer machine
that could say the word coffee. It had settings with which you could
influence the way it spoke the word, you could speed it up or slow it
down, or change the pitch. There was a row of square white lights on it
that corresponded with each letter, so you could see the word as well as
hear it.
Alas, in 1990 the Evoluon museum was closed because of ever di
This may be a reference to it (Score:3, Interesting)
Buy it? You gonna display it publicly? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Buy it? You gonna display it publicly? (Score:5, Funny)
It belongs in a museum!
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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
Interactive science slowly being eradicated (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh yeah, those logic gates with the ping pong balls were awesome! Probably my first taste of programming!
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Trivia: Evoluon [evoluon.com], the name of the original museum/building built by Philips to celebrate its 75th anniversary, is now a meeting/event center. While it's a shame that the exhibits aren't there, it's nice that the building has been kept up.
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Well, that may be true for the Ontario Science Center, but as a devoted museum goer I'd have to say it's not true in general. Science museums (even Children's museums) are far more interactive than they were forty years ago.
The most interactive science museum I've visited in the last several years is the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The least is the Smithsonian's Air and Space, but that's really an historical museum. The thrill is to be in the presence of the actual artifacts.
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!
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?
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Okay, apparently neither have I. I feel more than a little bit silly now.
Happy? (Score:1)
It's "Happy"
In a completely unrelated story one of the 7 Dwarfs was deported from Budapest today. As they escorted him onto the plane, the Hungarian immigration officials were heard to say:
"Come Happy, Leave Hungary"
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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.
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Odd, I went to Amazon and listened to a sample of the 60 minute single song album, and it included this very portion.
http://www.amazon.com/Amarok-Mike-Oldfield/dp/B00004T9AT [amazon.com]
I have no Idea if that is repeatable or if the samples are chosen at random.
Craigslist? (Score:2)
Consider posting an announcement (or whatever) on Craigslist Ontario [craigslist.org]
only marginally relevant... (Score:2)
but this video came to mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RowwNXKEt4k [youtube.com]
Generation X cinema (Score:2)
Brings Back Memories (Score:4, Funny)
Deaccessioned? (Score:2)
I know that you mentioned that you already asked the museum, but have you spoken with the registrars? There should be a record of the deaccessioning process. They should at least be able to tell you what they did with it.
Coffee? We can DO coffee! (Score:1)
While the "coffee" machine in the summary may be long gone, it is not without descendants!
BEHOLD: THE FUTURE!
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Coffee.html [tldp.org]
Now your computer can actually MAKE coffee!
The past... (Score:1)
Tracks Ontarians in a crowd! (Score:5, Funny)
I remember being somewhere in the mid-west in the 80's in a really crowded room when I heard someone someone ask for a coffee. In a different part of the room, another voice suddenly said "CoFFee!" in the unmistakable tone of the machine. Then another voice from somewhere else echoes "coffEE?". Within a second, a third voice replies "COFFee" in yet another tone.
I added my own, and then the four of us started to track each other down through the crowd with cries of
"CoFFeE?"
"COFFEE!"
Needless to say, the rest of the room thought we were insane or members of some bizarre cult.
I turned out there were three Ontarians and someone who had visited the Science Centre recently.
A lot of fun.
Here in Toronto, I still hear people of a certain age suddenly repeat "CofffEE!" for no apparent reason.
Freaks out the youngsters.
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Interesting. The way you describe it, one might almost think it was the inspiration for the voice of Wall-E -- where he goes through a bunch of dif
Bell Labs Speech Synth (Score:1)
In Seattle they say it differently (Score:1)
I found it! (Score:2, Informative)
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Interesting...got any more details?
thanks! (Score:2)
as a kid - this was my favourite exhibit at the science centre - it was the first time i'd ever seen machine speech synthesis.. and its many inflections of the word 'coffee' really stuck. i'd love to hear if anyone knows more about this machine. :-D
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
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Please mod this up -- it's a pretty direct answer.
It's in storage... (Score:5, Informative)
Same experience, different display (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:a sense of purpose? (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose seems to be to "ASK SLASHDOT."
Re:Best ask slashdot in a long time (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to post the exact same META: this is by far the best, most interesting Ask Slashdot entry I have ever seen. I wish the asker good luck.
By the way, I'm a hardware-kind-of-guy, and am of the same (retro) generation, so I will be following this adventure with much interest!
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The bad part is that now I have the voice of that machine stuck in my head, doing its strange variations on the word. Also, I need coffee.
Same here, except my coffee pot just broke (seriously) -- so now I have a deranged voice saying COFFEE over and over in my head, and I have no way to appease it!! This is not cool.
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This is the post which is just as worthless as those which preceded it, yet which somehow gets modded up to the utter annoyance of earlier posters.
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Who gives a shit?!
You're on the wrong site, dude.
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Naggers?
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Yes, but I excel at scanning boring stuff quickly. I've scanned it a bit more now. It's still boring. People were doing stuff WAY cooler than this even before the 70s, like The Mother of all Demos [wikipedia.org].