Although not claiming to be an expert in the field of speech recognition I spent some time researching the history of the subject when I began to develop the company's software. We define speech recognition as converting words into machine readable input producing a human readable output. Although music boxes had been around for centuries the first reference (Winkipedia) I can find to match our definition is an invention by Leon Scott called the phonoautograph in 1857. Leon Scott (see picture at left) was a French printer and bookseller. The recording medium in his phonoautograph was a piece of smoked paper attached to the surface of a drum which, when rotated, moved forwards along a helical screw. A stylus was attached to a diaphragm through a series of levers, which moved in a lateral direction when the diaphragm was vibrated by a voice. This caused a wavy line to be traced on the smoked paper. A barrel shaped mouthpiece was also included in the design. While not exactly the BirdAudio type recognition we have today for birdsongs the phonoautograph does match our criteria. Next month I'll discuss Alexander Graham Bell's contribution to this fasicnating field.There is a new, very interesting site that birders and especially birders that video birds should know about. http://www.birdcinema.com/ is trying to become the You-Tube for birders. If you have tried to catch nature videos on You-Tube you know that they are few and far between, especially videos of quality. Bird Cinema has remarkable videos uploaded by bird enthusists from around the world. The videos of a Red-tailed hawk and a Prarie falcon catching bats in Texas is amazing. There are tutorials for uploading your video, videos from broadcasts and still photos galore. Stop by and plan to spend a few hours seeing some awsome and endearing videos.
Scrub jays
are one species that come to my bird breakfast table. I always put out a couple of peanuts. They so look forward to this that they will fly down and almost take them from my hand. Last week I noticed a female House finch pecking on the ground and acting oddly. When the other finches would fly up into the laural bush because of some imagined threat this gal just looked up as if to say, "I know I should fly but I just can't." I went out to see if I could find something obviously wrong with her but she was gone when I got there. The next morning after the jay got his peanuts he went behind a rock and hauled out a dead female finch. He flew off with the bird. I have to think is was the same bird that was acting so strangely the day before. Does anyone know of Scrub jays eating carrion?Last year we sent a copy of our BirdAudio software to WildBird magazine for their review. The March/April issue has a small piece about BirdAudio. Go to page 62 to get their take on our birding software.
Until next month.
