The sound b is always spelled b
The sound sh may be spelled sh (ship), s (sugar), ti (station), ci (physician), ce (ocean) or tu (picture) and other statements based on context, word lists, derivation, etc. These are the statements by means of which a good English speller knows how to spell even words that he hears for the first time.
4. A triggering control so that, when the machine reaches good enough matching between its observations of sounds, its memory of sounds, and its knowledge of spelling rules, the machine will identify groups of sounds as words, determine their spelling, and report the letters determined.
5. An electric typewriter, which would type the reported letters.
With this type of machine, you would dictate your letters into a machine (now existing) that would record your voice. Then the record would be placed on the automatic stenographer, and out would come your letters written and spaced as they should be.
Automatic Recognizer
We can foresee a recognizing machine with very general powers. Suppose that we call it an automatic recognizer ([see Fig. 2]). It will have the following elements:
1. Input. This element will consist of a set of observing instruments, capable of perceiving sights, sounds, etc. There will be ways of positioning or tuning these instruments.
2. Memory. This element will store knowledge. It may store the patterns of observations that we are interested in; or it may store general rules on how to find patterns of observations that we will be interested in. It will contain knowledge about acceptable groups of patterns, about actions to be performed in response to patterns, etc.
3. Program 1. The element “Program 1” performs a set of standard instructions. Under these instructions, the machine: