Science: Time Compressor

Even in these jittery times, people don’t talk fast enough to suit University of Illinois Professor Grant Fairbanks. The ear, says Fairbanks, is quicker than the tongue, and words can be understood faster than they can be spoken. Determined to work the human ear to capacity, Fairbanks and his associates have invented a “Time Compressor,” a tape recorder that can take brief samples of speech, patch them together electronically and get a result that hardly alters the sound of the original words. By changing the size of the samples and varying the speed of the recording, speech can be compressed as much as 70% before it becomes unintelligible.

One possible use of the system: radio programs can be recorded, then expanded or compressed to fit their allotted time. Music, too—at least popular music—is easy to tighten up. Fairbanks went to work on Singer Rosemary Clooney’s record of Come On-a My House and cut it by 30%. Many listeners agreed that both words and music had been improved. “Rosemary,” explains the professor, “is very compressible.”