Pierre-Jean Rousselot : la phonétique expérimentale au service de l'homme

From the very beginning, Rousselot, the recognized founder of experimental Phonetics, considers this branch of knowledge as a useful discipline, socially involved in different fields such as dialectology, medicine, song, language learning, ballistics and aiming at the improvement of welfare and quality of life. This paper reports on an unprecedented case of phonetic expertise: a trial where Rousselot arbitrates a legal problem which has to do with speaking machines. It shows how Rousselot, like Paul Passy, puts oneself as well as his expertise in the service of social progress.