dictaphone
date: label: date made
content: about 1890
notes: label: Description
content: Alexander Graham Bell’s Volta laboratory, established in 1881, created the first dictation machine to record sound, specifically speech, for playback, its technology related to that of the gramophone (or phonograph, later record player). The Columbia Gramophone Company, a successor of Graham’s Volta Gramophone Company, trademarked the term “Dictaphone,” which would come to refer to all such machines, in 1907. Dictaphones were part of a revolution in business beginning in the late nineteenth century that prized efficiency of office work and communication. Intended to streamline document creation, they separated document composition from preparation with a gendered dimension: men “dictated” documents and women, usually typists, created them in writing, on the page. Although this office dynamic was already present through secretaries “taking dictation” in person, perhaps through shorthand, the Dictaphone meant that dictation could be recorded at any time and then made available for transcription. This helped to create additional need for typing labor, helping to expand women’s entry into clerical work.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: general subject association
content: Women's Rights
label: general subject association
content: Clerical occupations
label: general subject association
content: Clerks
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Mechanisms
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: ME.324160
label: catalog number
content: 324160
label: accession number
content: 253422
objectType: label: Object Name
content: dictaphone
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ferrous metal, paint, non-ferrous metal, rubber, plastic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 15 1/8 in x 12 1/2 in x 8 3/4 in; 38.4175 cm x 31.75 cm x 22.225 cm