A Christmas Eve present for everyone!
While scouring the web for news in the latest speech technology happenings, I stumbled on one of the oldest speech technology happenings. In a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the Dictaphone and Ediphone, I’ve found an advertisement film for the Ediphone on YouTube. The film is just about 100 years old, and gives us a lot of great views of the oldest on-premise speech solution in action.
The film begins in a woe-betided office inundated with reams of shorthand dictation, all of which must be transcribed by a young secretary. As the day wears on and frustration mounts, she suffers from a nervous breakdown. She must work well beyond five o’clock. There is just so much dictation! Surely there must be a better way!
Enter the Edison salesman. The Edison man shows off the Ediphone, which instantly increases productivity. So much so that our young secretary thankfully and lovingly strokes her machine.
The coolest thing about the advertisement is you get to see all the early speech tech in action. The entire Ediphone solution came with three machines: the Ediphone, which recorded and played back dictation; the shaver, which shaved down used cylinders so that they could be reused (each one could be shaved and reused 100 times); and a duplicator which could duplicate cylinders.
Only the Ediphone and shaver are shown in this short, but you get to see them operating in real time, giving you a feel for how they were actually used.
Bon appetite!
