Head Sounds

There are two theories of how vowel sounds are made: 1) that the vocal cords vibrate, like rubbed violin strings; 2) that, like blowing a whistle or across a bottle mouth, puffs of air from the vocal cords excite resonances in the head cavities (pharynx, mouth, nose, sinuses). To confirm one or the other theory, Lee Edward Travis of University of Iowa's Psychopathic Hospital and Archibald R. Buchanan of the Department of Anatomy, cut the heads from a couple of dead men, suspended the heads by wires from a ceiling and up through the severed necks blew puffs of air. The sounds which the heads emitted confirmed the cavity tone theory of vowel production.

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