This webpage is under construction. More information about the history of Czech phonetics, as well as of the Institute of Phonetics in Prague will be appearing soon.

Cinematography of the vocal folds

A film capturing the movements of the vocal folds was created in 1928 and 1929 by the phonetician Bohuslav Hála and Dr. Honty, a specialist in scientific cinematography. It was first screened in 1930 at the Fourth International Congress of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (held in Prague), and at a congress in Germany a year later. The authors also published a detailed description of the procedure along with some results from Czech. Several attempts had been done at filming the vocal folds, but Hála offered a combination of high-speed cinematography (employed for the first time for the examination of vocal folds) and stroboscopy (employed previously by Panconcelli-Calzia). Both methods allowed Hála to directly observe phonatory cycles; the vocal folds are seen in great detail and sharpness. The film was a huge success, and several copies were requested from England, France, Belgium, Germany and the USA. The copy preserved at the Institute of Phonetics was digitized by the National Film Archive and can be downloaded here.

Josef Chlumský’s correspondence

Selected correspondence between Josef Chlumský and various scholars (Hubert Pernot, Adrien Millet, Edward Wheeler Scripture). Excerpts used in two publications:

• Rialland, A., Šturm, P. & Fougeron, C. (2024). Rousselot’s succession through Pernot and Millet’s correspondence with Chlumský. In J. Bóna (Ed.), HSCR 2024: Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on the History of Speech Communication Research (pp. 25-34). Dresden: TUDpress.
• Šturm, P., Rialland, A. & Fougeron, C. (2024). Pernot, Scripture and Millet: Different ideas for running a journal of experimental phonetics in the early 20th century. In J. Bóna (Ed.), HSCR 2024: Proceedings of the Sixth International Workshop on the History of Speech Communication Research (pp. 35-45). Dresden: TUDpress.

You can download the files here (Pernot, Millet, Scripture).