1. Microphones, which can sense spoken sounds (these already exist). 2. A memory storing the 40 (more or less) phonetic units or sounds that make up English, such as the 23 consonant sounds, _p_ _b_ _l_ _ng_ _f_ _v_ _m_ _th_ _t_ _d_ _n_ _r_ _s_ _z_ _h_ _y_ _k_ _g_ _w_ _ch_ _j_ _sh_ _zh_ (heard in “pleasure”) and the 17 vowel sounds, LONG SHORT OTHER _A_ (“ate”) _a_ (“cat”) _ar_ (“are”) _E_ (“eat”) _e_ (“end”) _aw_ (“awe”) _I_ (“isle”) _i_ (“in”) _er_ (“err”) _O_ (“owe”) _o_ (“on”) _ow_ (“owl”) _U_ (“cute”) _u_ (“up”) _oi_ (“oil”) _OO_ (“roof”) _oo_ (“book”) 3. A collection of the rules of spelling in English, containing many statements like 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.