Just about every kid in the United States has play with a See ' n Say ® . These toy play a selection of sounds when you rend the chain ( or , on the modern ones , pull a lever tumbler ) .
Toy Image Gallery
If , for example , you point the dial at the moo-cow and pull the string , the toy dog says , " The moo-cow pronounce Moo . " See ' n Says have been around forever ; they habituate nobatteriesand they are well-nigh indestructible – I ’ve see See ' n Says submerge in tub , thrown down the stride , dropped onto concrete patios … and they work fine afterwards !
Have you ever question how one of these toy operate ? How can it make sound without a electric battery , and how can it have 26 unlike musical phrase stored at bottom ? In this clause , we will work out the mystery of the See ' nitrogen Say !
History
Thomas Edison is credited with create the first equipment for memorialize and playing back sounds in 1877 . His approach used a very unproblematic mechanism to put in an analogue wave mechanically . In Edison ’s originalphonograph , a diaphragm directly ensure a phonograph needle , and the needle scratched an analog signal onto a tinfoil cylinder :
You verbalise into Edison ’s machine while rotate the piston chamber , and the needle " recorded " what you say onto the tin . That is , as the diaphragm vibrated , so did the needle , and those vibrations imprint themselves into the tin . To play the speech sound back , the phonograph needle moved over the groove that was scratched during recording . During playback , the vibrations pressed into the atomic number 50 caused the phonograph needle to vibrate , have the diaphragm to vibrate and play the phone .
This system was better by Emil Berliner in 1887 to bring about thegramophone , which is also a purely mechanically skillful equipment that apply a needle and diaphragm . The acoustic gramophone ’s major improvement was the use of flat criminal record with a spiral groove , making mass production of the records easy .
The See ' n Say uses this exact same gramophone technology over 100 age afterwards !
Inside a See ‘n Say
The heart of a See ' n Say is aplastic diskthat is very interchangeable to a gramophone disk . A track containing the healthy wave for each of the See ' n Say ’s sounds is embossed on the magnetic disc . A typical See ' n Say has between 10 and 26 sounds , and all of these sounds are stored inconcentric racetrack :
On the edge of the disk you may see the starting points for the dissimilar concentric rail .
Sound reproduction is extremely simple . Ametal needlerides in one of the grooves and transmits the vibrations embossed in the rut directly to a plastic conespeaker :
The needle is embedded in the T - shaped piece of plastic . The phonograph needle picks up the vibration practice embed in the plastic disk and beam it to the T , which transmits it to the retinal cone through the red slice of plastic that forms the tip of the conoid . What you are hearing when a See ' n Say speaks is the purely mechanically skillful vibration of that plastic cone !
When you extract the cord , it lifts the needle and draw out it back to the taboo bound of the disc . Pulling the string also winds thebrass springiness , and the energy in the spring is what turns the disk to play the phone .
The only other part inside a See ' n Say is an incredibly nicegovernorthat control the disk ’s pep pill when it spread out . In this picture you could see a stripe wrap around the phonograph record and the governor ’s rotating shaft :
The governor itself is made of two spring - laden weights , as shown in the take after shots :
When the disk spins too quickly , the weights fell outward and employ atmospheric pressure to the interior of the piston chamber , slow down the disk down . In equilibrium , the regulator keeps the disk spinning at exactly the right speed !
And that ’s it ! A See ' n Say is really that bare : embossed disk + metallic element needle + plastic cone speaker = vocalise . The string winds the bounce , the spring turns the disk and the governor maintain the disk from spinning too apace . you’re able to now see why , even after a bath , the See n ' Say will keep on working .
The trend today is toward battery - run toys with embedded microprocessors to produce the sound ( read , for exercise , about thesinging Pisces ) . However , the classic See n ' Say is a classic because it convey nineteenth century engineering science and create an indestructible toy from it !
