Category: Alumni, Celebrations, Faculty, General, Graduate Students

UCLA Phonetics Lab celebrates its 50th Anniversary!

Published: June 20, 2014

The UCLA Phonetics Lab celebrates its 50th Anniversary today! In true phonetician style there will be IPA Bingo, spectrogram reading and reminiscing of old times through the labs extensive photo collection!

Introduction from Pat Keating:

On the early days of the lab (or, What is this the 50th anniversary of?): “Peter arrived at UCLA by Fall 1962, when (thanks to Bob Stockwell) there was already a phonetics lab with Kay spectrograph, an Ampex recorder and a sound-proof room” (interview with Peter by Alan Kaye, 2006). By the end of that academic year he had a large NIH grant, putting the UCLA Phonetics Lab well on its way. The grant work began in June 1963, and in June 1964 Working Papers in Phonetics appeared: a report on the first year of the grant. In the intro to that volume, Peter says that the year was partly spent in “dealing with all the problems due to starting work in an almost non-existent laboratory.” So we are following Peter’s lead in viewing June 1964 – 50 years ago – as the point when the lab was, at last, functional, and could be presented to the world.