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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?"
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.
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.
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!
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
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!
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.
-- Alastair
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.
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
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
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