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Information On Philips' "Coffee" Machine?
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?"
has Slashdot.org turned into this guy's personal Wanted/Looking classified ads section? How did this get posted
Sounds a little like a vocoder.
Let's see if we can leverage the wisdom of the crowds, or if crowds are all idiots (slashdot included, of course).
The purpose seems to be to "ASK SLASHDOT."
Mod parent troll. The topic is 'Ask Slashdot', asshat. That's the purpose. It IS a forum discussion.
Here: The Science Page I found the following: "A machine which said 'COFFEE' which was located in the center hall. The machine was built from discrete components and had a series of coils and capacitors for filters and oscillators. Lamps lit up the letters "C", "O", "FF" and "EE" as the machine spoke. Visitors could vary parameters using analog pots to make the word sound different." So maybe Mark Csele knows.
Please disregard my previous post as I thought it had said Gadgets: and not Ask /. I should probably sleep hence hallucinations are now inevitable.
Sure you aren't thinking about a Tim Horton's drive thru?
rewriting history since 2109
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. This site is run by a man named Kees who may be able to answer your questions.
So, a quick search brought up this article from 2008 by Paul Shindman. http://www.canadasisrael.ca/2008/09/can-you-still-hitchhike-in-canada/ It looks to be just a reference, but you may want to contact Paul directly to see if he knows anything else. Happy hunting.
If you buy it. What do you plan on doing with it. Will you display it in a museum. Or will you keep it to your self. If you keep it to your self, I hope you make a good quality video of it. I wish you success in finding it.
My Web Site
Also, check out this dutch forum ( Google Translation ) for more info and pics.
Right at the end of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-_pZV3tDiw
I think he's just looking for a drink of coffee.
I loved that "coffee" machine. And all the interactive exhibits that are no longer there, everything from the huge logic gates to the parabolic microphones. At some point I think society switched from learning how to build things to just using them, and a lot of these kinds of changes reflect themselves in our "science" centres as well.
Slashdot: Everything in Moderation, including Moderation itself.
If this was indeed built by Philips Electronics, maybe you can make use of these possible leads. First, the NINT technology museum in Amsterdam might have information in their archives, as they used to have quite a bit of Philips technology in their exhibits (various demo programs running on P2000s come to mind). Second, the Evoluon in Eindhoven (home of Philips Electronics) used to be a science/tech museum. They aren't now so ghod knows what happened to their collection. But both might be worth a shot.
On the same note, Philips has (obviously) close ties to the local university (tech uni Eindhoven), with their R&D there too ("natlab") thoug the national academic technology books collection resides in Delft (tech uni Delft). The respective university libraries have their catalogues online, of course.
For those too lazy to copy/paste: The "machine" appears at 7:34
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!
Nippon Precision Components?? It's the Netherlands, not Japan. Shirley you mean NXP....
The part of Philips that was into speech synthesis and recognition went through many different incarnations until it became part of Nuance.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Fondest memories of trip to Toronto in my youth was the Science Center and CN Tower. For years, my brother and I could crack each other up by just saying the word, "Coffee".
This video was amazing, thanks for the link! A must-see for any fans of 1960s Venture Brothers type super-science.
Rather 06:59, unless the head 2-3 seconds before is part of it to.
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?
It belongs in a museum!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Consider posting an announcement (or whatever) on Craigslist Ontario
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
but this video came to mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RowwNXKEt4k
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
This machine makes an appearance when Tron and Flynn are kept as prisoners by Sark and forced to keep offering coffee until they get erased.
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"
VTech used to have a few electronic toys which would sound out the words for each number key pressed. What was really funny was that, if one pressed 5 then 2 quickly enough, the resulting sound would be F****OU......great fun at otherwise boring engineering meetings (I used to work for them in the telecom division)... Needless to say, the toys division changed their design..... :-))))
Around 1977 we took a family camping trip to Toronto. You should have seen us as we went sightseeing. Adam was walking, Jenn was in a stroller and April was in a backpack. One of my favorite memories was Jenn playing with this machine. It would simply say the word "coffee" and there was a dial on it that would make it sound differently. Jenn loved this machine and I remember we had to drag her away from it. When I sent this article to Jenn (who is now 36) she responded, "Aww, it's a shame it's gone. I wonder what could have happened to it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go, um, make some coffee. In the closet."
Haha I thought I was watching an episode of the Venture Brothers for a moment.
Go for super science!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Who gives a shit?!
You're on the wrong site, dude.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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
Now your computer can actually MAKE coffee!
Off topic but, does anyone remember the birth control animated video in the life section at the Ontario Science Centre? Everyone I tell about this video doesn't believe me. I just need one person to tell me it existed so I won't doubt my sanity. I just remember it was an animated video that was rather graphic showing various methods of birth control are used. Anyone?
Things were so futuristic back then.
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.
d00d, if the Nazis get ahold of this machine, and are like, "At last, we will be able to hear the word 'coffee' modulated in various funny ways." And then they fire it up, and it causes their heads to melt and/or explode...then that would be awesome.
This isn't a direct answer, however its of interest to people interested in this. Sadly however some of the links are broken or missing information. A member of the SynthDIY mailing list bought a Bell Labs Speech Board and put some info up here : http://www.oldcrows.net/~patchell/voicesynth/voicesynth.html Sadly the link to the schematic is broken but I've emailed to see if he can fix it. Jim also did some experiments and eventually made an insanely complex vocal filter board : http://www.oldcrows.net/~patchell/vocalfilter/vocalfilter.html He also did a board layout and sold some boards for a vocal filter : http://www.oldcrows.net/~patchell/synthmodules/vocalfilter.html I rather expect that the Philips COFFEE machine is closely related to these sorts of circuits. I can't find a link right now, but there was an S-100 phonetic speech synth card that contained a bunch of ROMs and a complete set of vocal filters. It didn't use one of the several LSI chips that were around in the 70s/80s ( Votrax and friends ).
Free Text to Speech
I'm told that after the machine was taken off display, it passed through several hands and is now the personal property of one Faheem Rasheed Najm. Sounds plausible to me.
I L O V E D that machine... My parents let me loose in the Science Centre throughout the late 70's and early 80's. It's been an inside joke between my wife (also a geek) and I for years... To this day, when she makes coffee she pronounces it like the machine used to when we last saw it - "COHEE?" What a blast from the past!
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
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.
Are you sure you're not thinking of Computashave?
The Philips museum, to which we (I work for Philips) send all our old but still interesting devices.
Interesting that in the 70's a "computer" exhibit it was an analogue computer. Sounds like it was an evolution of the AT&T "VODER" system at the 1939 World's fair. A simulation of the human voice track it had four controls that were run by trained operators (all cute young girls, given the sensitivities of the time) who used their hands and feet to "speak" to visitors. In the 50s and early 60s computations by analog computers were cheaper although less accurate in general. Keep in mind that computation then meant solving differential equations, something that amplifiers, capacitors and inductors do naturally. Also round off error was poorly understood and bits were expensive. By the early 70's the price of digital circuitry was coming down fast and digital was clearly the computer of the future. Analogue components have to be consistent over their whole range in order to be used in mass produced hardware, digital just needs to switch consistently.
The UFO shaped Evoluon 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 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!
Insert
...at reading comprehension.
And for those who are also too lazy to manually go to 7:34, this link jumps right to that position.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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
I recall the CO-FF-EE voice synthesis interactive thingamajig why back in the ‘70s, and if I recall it was made of discrete though-hole components and possibly no ICs. I also remember taking my younger brothers to the Ontario Science Centre in the early ‘90s (91? Or 92?) and it was still there, but IT WAS BROKEN! I can recall this fact nearly 20 years later as I was both disappointed to see an OSC exhibit broken, and being in my early 20s at the time, somewhat CY-NIC-AL. In the ‘80s Radio Shack sold a voice synthesis chip from General Instruments with the part number SP0256-AL2 (See http://www.speechchips.com/downloads/sp0256-17%20datasheet.pdf ). I remember purchasing this chip, interfacing with a Commodore 64 and using the setup as part of a Science Fair project in ’87 or so... Good luck on your search...
http://www.facebook.com/sciencecentrememories?ref=ts The Ontario Science Centre Memory Bank is a Facebook group for sharing pics and notes about favorite displays and experiences at the OSC... They include a pic and some notes about the Philips Coffee Machine and it's current whereabouts... At last word it was held in a warehouse, needing spare parts. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3172797&id=64649215395
---- You are fully entitled to my opinion.
I was at the Ontario Science Museum in the early 90's where a "fish silo" was on display; this was a tall transparent cylinder about 5 feet in diameter with a spiraling floor from top to bottom. There was a downward flowing current through the spiral which the fish would swim against for exercise. It was billed as a super-efficient fish farm that allowed the fish to exercise in ways they couldn't (or didn't) in a regular pond farm and thus produced fish more like wild-caught. I asked about this a few years later and never could find anyone connected with the museum who'd ever heard of the thing.
My most vivid memory of the machine at the Ontario Science Centre was a discovery that me and my friends made during a school trip. If you rubbed your feet on the carpet then touched the machine's speaker, the static charge would trigger it without having to push the button.
Unlike doing it the "proper" way, this method allowed a re-trigger in mid speech. By having more than one person trigger the machine rapidly in succession using static, we got a good laugh hearing it stutter "co-co-coff-coffee".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-_pZV3tDiw
At the end of the video you can see a demonstration of the machine.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I didn't even remember that thing until I read this post... That really takes me way back. I am only 28 and left Ontario before the '90s but it was definitely there until the late 80's. I am feeling very nostalgic...
------- "I must create my own system, Or be enslaved by another man's" -William Blake
OMG! I worked at the Science Centre circa 1973 in Exhibit Maintenance (not the Hosts who help you on the floor). At the time, that synthesized voice was leading edge even if it could only say 'coffee'. I've been back a few times and don't recognize the place. Behind the scene's in the workshops was facinating too.
Not sure my earlier message got posted; the Coffee Machine is still around! After seeing all this enthusiasm and affection for the exhibit, we hope to get it back on display soon. We'll keep you updated on www.facebook.com/ontariosciencecentre
Thanks everyone!