Dictaphone Cameo Shaver

[Chuck]

Here is a picture of my Dictaphone "Cameo" model shaver. Picked it up in West Palm Beach, FL in 2009. It was on Craigslist. It came with many NOS blanks. $35 total.

It was rough. It had seen very tough service
in the greater NYC steno-pool and had been worked on by some real hacks.

It took several days of intensive TLC, completely disassembled, cleaned, filed off the burrs, bent things straight again, ran wires back where they are supposed to be, and now it
works right again.

Chuck

[debndunk]

Hi Chuck,
Thats a beaut, look's like it's from the 40s? Gordon

[Chuck]

Yeah, 1940s or even possibly 1950s.

I do not like using it nearly as much as my old
1923 one that is like your's Gordon.

Those older ones have the knurled wheel to
directly adjust the cutter.

These newer ones have a different arrangement.
You've got to push a button and lock it down
and it cuts off a set amount which is governed
by another adjustment.

That, plus the fact that the Cameo model has
all those guards on it, and also the carriage
on the Cameo does not lift up very far so it
makes cleaning the chip chute much more
difficult.

Picked up 3 more Dictaphone machines today!
Another Cameo shaver just like the one pictured
plus a model 12 dictating machine which looks
like it will play and record, and then also
a Cameo model transcriber machine which looks
to be playback only.

So, I will be busy cleaning those up and
making them ready for service again. They
are not too bad, but still it's going to be
lots of work.

Chuck

[edisonphonoworks]

Good shavers are gold to us who make blanks. I use Edison brand shavers, and the company has 3 of them.

[Chuck]

Got the 2nd Cameo shaver fired up yesterday.
I made some temporary belts for it out of
clear scotch tape folded onto itself.
Shaved up 2 of the Nuphonic blanks that came
with it.

Then went about getting into the Dictaphone
model 12. Finally figured out how to remove
the recorder/reproducer, got it out, cleaned
it up. Then worked on the mechanism for a while
and got the machine running. Went ahead and
tested it on one of the Nuphonic blanks.

To my utter surprise, it recorded everything
I said and played it back rather nicely for
a first test! I then made an 80 rpm stobe
disc and put it on the end of the mandrel
and it was running just a hair fast. Not by much though!

These machines are a cross between a manual
typewriter and an Edison phonograph, with a
little Frankenstein thrown in.

"Complex" does not even begin to describe
how it's built. There are more tiny parts
crammed into such little space I have never
seen anything quite like this ever before.
The Dictaphone model 12 is not much larger
than a shoebox.

And that recorder does not sound bad considering its gaskets are concrete and it has
been sitting idle for about 50 years.
Forget about rebuilding that recorder too:
It is aluminum and it's crimped together.

80 rpm is S-L-O-W.

Chuck

[Chuck]

A little update on the progress with the
Dictaphone model 12 dictating machine:

Shawn you are correct that its feed is 160 grooves per inch. I mistakenly thought it was 150 grooves per inch, but I measured it this evening and it checks out right at 160.

After thinking about how to do it here's what
I ended up doing:

I taped a narrow paper strip to the front of
the recorder/reproducer. Then I magneted another paper strip to the front guard, just above the carriage. That strip had 2 fine pencil marks on it exactly 1 inch apart.

With the machine unpowered and with no record
on the mandrel, I let the carriage down and
lined up the edge of the paper on the carriage
with the stationary mark on the other paper
strip. I then turned the mandrel by hand
150 turns and the 2nd mark was still a ways off. Rotating the mandrel 10 more turns lined
up the 2nd mark, it was just peeking out from
under the edge of the strip on the carriage.

160 TPI it is.

Those all work together to make a very easy
set of numbers to understand:

80 rpm and 160 TPI means that for each inch
of grooves it will play for 2 minutes.

Each cylinder is 6 inches long, so each one
stores 12 minutes of dictation.

Chuck