SOUND SPECTROGRAPH AND VOICE PRINTS – A NEW PARADIGM IN THE CRIMINAL JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION
The idea that someone could be identified by the sound of his voice had its origins in the work of Alexander Melville Bell (father to Alexander Graham Bell). Over one hundred years ago, he developed a visual representation of what the spoken word would look like. It was based on pronunciation and he showed that there were subtle differences among different people who said the same things. Then in 1941, the laboratories of Bell Telephone inNew Jersey produced a machine—the sound spectrograph—for mapping a voice onto a graph. It analyzed sound waves and produced a visual record of voice patterns that were based on frequency, intensity, and time. Acoustic scientists used it during World War II to identify enemy voices on telephones and radios. However, with the war's end, the urgency for this technology diminished and little came of it until later.
