On the Early History of Hungarian Speech Research

This article provides a critical review on the beginnings and the development of Hungarian speech research from the 1700s up to the modern era. The aim is to highlight the tradition in order to keep a good memory of the useful results of the past and of the Hungarian researchers who achieved them in this scientific field. Farkas Kempelen, the Hungarian nobleman and his work will be introduced first. The paper then deals with the early achievements of experimental investigations, the description of the devices used, and the further developments. Results that are unknown in the phonetic and speech technology literature will be discussed.