What is a Dictaphone?

A Dictaphone is a dictating machine: a recorder for a speaker's voice, meant to be played back later by a person who writes the words down. The speaker records, and someone else does the typing. That division of labor is the point of the device, and it is why the machine is called a dictating machine rather than just a recorder. For the wider story, see our history of dictation.

A Dictaphone records a voice so a typist can transcribe it

The work often took two steps. The manager spoke into the machine, and later a typist loaded the recording, listened and typed. The typist controlled playback with a foot pedal ¹, which let them slow the recording, reverse it and hear a phrase again. The device stored the words, and the writing was left to a person.

That arrangement was ordinary for a long time. Throughout most of the twentieth century, business people recorded voice letters, and a secretary typed them up from the recordings ². The machine did not understand the words. It only kept them.

The name came from a trademark, and it became a generic word

The name comes from a trademark. The Office Museum dates its use this way: Graphophone dictating machines began to use the Dictaphone trademark around 1907, and in any case by 1908 ³. The source gives only the year, and it marks the date as approximate.

A dominant brand can give its name to a whole category. Speech Technology magazine says Dictaphone dominated the market so thoroughly that its name became the generic term for dictation machines ⁴. So an office worker who said "dictaphone" could mean a machine from any maker.

The company that carried the name later filed annual reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Its report for fiscal 1996, filed in 1997, described the traditional desktop and portable dictation products as tape machines ⁵.

The storage medium changed from wax to plastic belts

The machines did not stay the same. In 1947, Dictaphone phased out wax cylinders in favor of the plastic Dictabelt ⁶. Each belt held about 15 minutes of recording ⁷, so a longer dictation needed more than one belt.

Each change altered the medium, but none of them changed the arrangement. The speaker recorded, and the typist transcribed.

What a Dictaphone does not do

A Dictaphone records and plays back. It does not recognize speech, and it does not type. Turning the recording into text needed a person, which is why transcription was a job in its own right. Software that types what you say is a different tool, and it is covered in our overview of dictation.

Which tool fits the job

The right choice depends on who will type the words:

• A person types later. A digital recorder and a transcriptionist fit this case, especially for long letters or notes that need careful editing. The guide to how to dictate covers the steps.
• You want the text now. Speech software types as you talk. On a Mac, Apple says that general Dictation text is processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers ⁸. Yap, which we make, also works on the device for Mac and Windows.
• You want the old typist's controls. A dictation foot pedal gives hands-free playback control, the same job the typist's pedal did.

What to do

1. Decide whether a person will transcribe the recording or software will.
2. Record in a quiet room with the microphone close to your mouth, so the words are clear when they are played back.
3. Keep the recording and the finished text together, so anyone checking the words can listen again.

For the other half of the story, read what shorthand dictation is, and for the meaning of the phrase, what it means to take dictation.