Business As Usual!

Dictabelt Cover

Actual Dictabelt used for recording

A Typical 1950's
Black&White Console TV

The Dictaphone Time-Master

"Ahead of your time with the Dictaphone Time-Master" was Dictaphone's invitation to prospective buyers. And then in language that dates the machine: "Thousands of business executives, doctors, lawyers, government men and others whose thoughts are important rely on Time-Masters and Dictabelts as their thoughts thruway." Dictabelt was the medium, or software as we would call it today, for the famous Dictaphone machine, which was introduced in 1947 by the Dictaphone Corporation. At one time there were tens of thousands of them in the offices of American insurance companies alone. Ten years later Dictaphone would introduce its first magnetic recorder, the Dictet, but the Dictabelt had another decade of life in it, and a few Dictabelts were in service even as late as the 1980's. But by 1979, when Pitney Bowes acquired Dictaphone, they had virtually disappeared. Today it is difficult to find even one.

The basic technology of the Dictaphone is groove and stylus. The medium is belt shaped, as opposed to a cylinder or disc. A pair of mandrels rotated the belt, which was usually made of an acetate based material. A lead screw guided a stylus across the belt. The stylus, driven by the amplified signal from a microphone, cut a groove in the belt and thus stored a signal that could then be played back on the same machine. (After it introduced magnetic belts, Dictaphone called these original belts "visible belts" since the signal – meaning the grooves could be seen, whereas on the magnetic belts it could not.)

Dic·ta·phone PRONUNCIATION:   dkt-fn A trademark used for an apparatus that records and reproduces dictation  for transcription. This trademark sometimes occurs in print in lowercase.

For urgent messages, holiday greetings, and long-distance communications, the telegram was the way to communicate in the 40's. You could call your message in, or go to a Western Union office and fill out a blank form, and in no time at all your message would be sent over telegraph lines and delivered by a uniformed Western Union employee on his trusty bicycle. By 1945, Western Union began to replace its century-old system of poles and wires with the new technology of microwave transmission.

L.C. Smith & Corona  the Electric Portable Typewriter - "...the world's first…" - 1958

1948 - L.C. Smith & Corona
Office Typewriter with 'Page Gage'.

From 1958 - this is for Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company's  Thermo-Fax copier - the first real personal copy machine

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