Gluck

1910 · 67396 — 1910. BKW 47/ 1. - Berlin August Hirschwald 3. Januar 1910 4° 44 pp. feine Broschur. THE FIRST ELECTROLARYNX WAS DEVELOPED BY GLUCK! First Edition! Electromagnetically Driven Devices - "As the disadvantages of pneumatically driven reed-based voice sources could not be adequately remedied these devices were abandoned especially after the appearance of electrolarynx devices which produced electromagnetically driven vibrations. The first electrolarynx was developed by Gluck and was composed of an Edison phonograph connected to a telephone receiver located in the patient's mouth. The Edison cylinder contained a recording of a singer's vowel 98. A subsequent version 99 consisted of a loudspeaker built into an upper denture Figure 12. The most famous electrolarynx is the Servox speech aid Servona Troisdorf Germany; Figure 13. It consists of a cylinder with a vibrating element. The top side contains a membrane that is driven electromagnetically and thus can vibrate. By holding the membrane against the throat the patient transmits vibrations that set the air within the vocal cavities into vibration. He or she can convert these sound waves into understandable speech in a manner comparable to the conversion of the acoustic source generated by vocal fold vibrations. A major disadvantage is that the resulting voice sounds mechanical and has no means for intonation leading to an unnatural monotonous voice. An attempt to modify the device by adding manual pitch control by rotating a knob was unsuccessful because control was again far from intuitive and thus very difficult to learn. Until the introduction of the PE voice the electrolarynx was the first choice for creating an artificial voice. External electrolarynges are still used today but only by a small number of patients." G.J. Verkerke and S.L. Thomson: Sound-Producing Voice Prostheses: 150 Years of Research. Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering 16/1 2014 pp.215-245 Themistocles Gluck 1853-1942 physician and surgeon. He first invented endoprostheses from ivory in 1890 at Berlin when he performed the first documented total wrist Arthroplasty. He received the 1st State Prize of the Berlin University for his work on nerve suturing and nerve regeneration. The French surgeons Louis Léopold Ollier and Jules Péan had already recognized Gluck's importance in the 1890s. With his laryngeal surgery he achieved world renown. Nevertheless it took a long time for him to receive the academic recognition he deserved as a non-university surgeon. It was not until he was 70 years old 1922 that he was made an associate professor and even nominated for the Nobel Prize unsuccessfully because his work was considered too old at the time. unknown