Friday, August 9, 2013

"New" Model Dictaphone



Expositions have traditionally featured the latest contraptions. This is a souvenir card from the Dictaphone exhibit at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. The souvenir is printed on both sides of a card that folds in the middle. One half has a detachable postcard that you could "mail to your friends as a souvenir of your visit to A Century of Progress."

According to the information on the card, the exhibit featured "the new Model 12, the new Dictaphone Cabinet, the original Tainter model, and practical demonstrations of office efficiency and economy." (Tainter was an inventor involved with others, including Alexander Graham Bell,  in developing the first Dictaphone.) The Model 12 was said to be "compact"in 1933, but it looks monstrous by today's standards.






The Dictaphone's earliest development occurred at the Volta Laboratory established by Alexander Graham Bell in Washington, D.C. in 1881 (Wikipedia). Dictaphones used wax cylinders for voice recording until after WWII. Needless to say, there have many advances in voice recording and transcription in the 80 years since A Century of Progress. There is even an app for that.

To See More Vintage Images

18 comments:

  1. It seems a pretty elaborate contraption, considering that you could fit a device to do the same thing nowadays into a small shirt pocket.

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  2. Ah, yes. We have made great(?) progress...

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  3. What fascinating machines they are. I,ve only ever used one a couple of times and by then they were tiny portable tape recorders.

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  4. Back when these very substantial recording devices were in vogue, how you could hold the center of attention and be sooo important using this device. As important a personage as the one doing the dictating.

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  5. I remember the smaller Dictaphones of the 70s and 80, but these are so large and somewhat cumbersome by comparison.

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  6. Please send Dictaphone Precision Shaver in plan brown wrapper by return post. Thanks. ;)

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  7. What amazing contraptions.The transcribers must have been pretty efficient with the foot pedals - like playing and organ.

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  8. It looks like you could use it as an oxygen machine too.

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  9. I find technology like this depressing. How many dictaphones are stored away in office closets? Where would you find parts if you had a broken one? Who puts dictaphone skills on their resume?

    In my shop I have an ancient electric adding machine that I found on the street. It's a marvel of gears, levers, and springs. It weights about 30 pounds. If you put a ribbon in it, it will add and subtract, but only if you have electricity and fix the short in the capacitor. I'd probably pick up a dictaphone too if was free.

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  10. Many years ago I remember a coworker of mine trying in vain to figure out what her boss had dictated into his machine. She asked all of us to listen, but we couldn't figure it out either. It didn't help that her boss smoked a pipe & often either had it in his mouth when talking, or banged it on his special pipe ashtray while dictating. Defeated, she finally left him a note asking what brand of whiskey he'd been drinking when he dictated the letter because she figured she needed the same to translate it.

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  11. Wow! We have certainly come a long ways....thanks for the pictures.

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  12. In the early 90s when working with British Rail I came across two outraged secretaries listening to a dictaphone which one had to transcribe for her boss. They were sure he was swearing not knowing that he was using the latest quality acronym - OfQ.

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  13. These are fascinating. I'm now wondering if you haven't solved a problem I had trying to figure out what some equipment is in an old office photo I bought last week. My photo is probably from the 1930s or late '20s. You may have saved the day for me.

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  14. How fun to revisit those early "contraptions" to ponder how far we've come.

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  15. We have come a long way since ten. Great images for the theme.

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  16. It really is amazing how far technology has come in a relatively short time. How far will it go?

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  17. They are quite intimidating to look at.

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  18. Indeed, there seems be an app for absolutely everything.
    Here i's like bluetooth and pathologists give their diagnostic on all the specimens they examine.
    No need for a cabinet at all!!
    Sometimes, things do change for the best.
    :)~
    HUGZ

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