This is an invention that owes its origins to two of the greatest inventors, the world has ever seen – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. It is considered to be the first device for recording sound that could be used in an office for dictation purposes.

The word Dictaphone came into being in 1907. It was the trademark of the first office dictation machines sold by the Columbia Graphophone Company which was co-founded by Alexander Graham Bell. Later, the word dictaphone became a generic name for all such devices that could record speech and later playback the audio for being typed into print format.

From being an extension of the telephone with recording features, the dictaphone went electric in 1939 and went on to being used for recording enemy communications in World War II. It soon became an essential tool for journalists, students, writers practically anybody who needed to record conversations for later reference.
Brands like Sony, Sanyo, Philips came out with various models of different sizes and abilities.

Today the dictaphone has made way for Digital Voice Recorders that combine voice recognition with expandable memory and USB drives that can connect to the PC to transfer voice files.

The future belongs to the voice recognition software which will be available on more devices than just computers and mobile phones. Something that the century-old brand Dictaphone is doing extensively today…as part of Nuance Communications!