So I was talking to Bill Scholz recently, and we got on the topic of how speech is portrayed in the “mainstream media.” Bill feels that part of the resistance to speech is the negative press that the modality has gotten. He said that for a while, whenever you heard about speech on the news it was usually with reference to some disastrous failure. He pointed to that infamous Windows Vista incident where some hapless Microsoft worker was demoing the speech capabilities in Word and couldn’t get the system to recognize a single thing.

Incidents like those tend to tarnish the whole of speech technology. When coupled with the nightmare IVR experiences that we’ve all had it leads some to nihilism and conclusions like, “the only future in speech is silence.” Plus, these things all have great stickiness on the internet, because who doesn’t want to watch something crash and burn? It’s not like we can go down to the Coliseum and watch enemies of the Empire get eaten by lions or watch grown men wail on each other with a trident a net. Even bullfighting has become immoral. Speech disasters are the only such kicks the modern world can comfortably afford us.

So, because it’s a slow news day, in that spirit of mainstream media gawkery, I present you the following disaster from 1992, that’s at least new to me: the robotic demise of Abraham Lincoln.

Apparently, back then, the audioanimatronic Lincoln at Disney World’s Hall of Presidents slowly crumpled before a horrified audience’s eyes. My brother Adam B. was reduced to tears, actually.

The robot in question is a storied machine. Walt Disney had the robotic Lincoln built long before he conceived of an entire Hall of Presidents. The machine was built for the 1964 World’s Fair and was the first (and here’s how it thinly relates to speech) audioanimatronic. The production was a kind of trainwreck, according to Disney biographer Neal Gabler. It leaked oil, it sparked horrible fire from its mouth, set backs prevented it from opening on time. In the end though, it premiered at the Illinois pavillion to great success and was one of Disney’s major lifetime achievements.

Watch it go to pieces here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF0j69pAM7g[/youtube]