Dictaphone model 10 X transcribing machine...

[De Soto Frank]

Found a fairly nice Dictaphone Transcribing machine today, looks like the model 10-X that I found in Google images...

It is play-back-only, with ear-tubes, on a floor stand with cylinder storage underneath ( like a wine-rack ).

Do these have any usefulness to the talking machine enthusiast as a playback device, or are they strictly a dinosaur from the pre-WW II office ?

[rgordon939]

How about some pictures?

Rich Gordon

[De Soto Frank]

Rich,

I didn't have my digital camera with me...

Here's the closest thing I could find on the internet:

Just to re-affirm - this particular Dictophone is for play-back only; it will not record. (At least not with the reproducer it came with.)

The machine in question is represented by the center image on the post-card below...

[Lucius1958]

I should think, as the pitch on dictating machines is different from that of entertainment machines, it would be of interest only to collectors of office equipment - perhaps less so, as it cannot record…

Bill

[Chuck]

Those Dictaphone machines run at 80 RPM.
The groove pitch is 160 per inch.
The records are 6 inches long, so at 2 minutes
per inch, these records play for 12 minutes.

The transcriber machine you describe is the one
that the stenographer uses when she types
the letter for the boss.

She uses the ear tubes to listen, and she usually
had 2 foot pedals to start and stop the machine,
and to back up and repeat a phrase.

The machine that both records and plays is the one the boss used to dictate the letters.

The third kind of machine is the shaver, which erases the dictation and makes the blanks ready
for more use.

These blanks are large diameter, and when new
are about 2.384 inch outside diameter.

The taper is the same as an Edison entertainment cylinder. Actually, the Edison
phonograph cylinder taper is a subset of the
longer taper of the Ediphone or Dictaphone
taper. Any Ediphone or Dictaphone mandrel
contains within it the whole Edison phonograph
mandrel and then some.

I have a complete set of these machines that
are fully working. I find them fun and interesting to operate and to use.

They are, after all, the survivors of the
cylinder technology that lasted up well into
the 1960s! The Edison taper survived.

This is why the Ediphone and Dictaphone shavers
are so useful for those of us who need them
for shaving Edison phonograph blanks.

By the way, about the largest diameter for
an Edison cylinder is around 2.196 inches.
Compare that to a NOS Ediphone or Dictaphone
blank, which comes in at 2.384 inch diameter.

Those dictation blanks were meant to be able
to be recorded and shaved about 100 times
before being too small to work any further.

Compare that to an Edison blank, which when
shaved .004 inches each cycle, will last for
at most 21 shaves to take it from 2.196, down
to 2.112, which is about the smallest it can
be before nothing can reach it any longer.

I, personally think that anyone who really
enjoys cylinder records should have at least
one full working set of Dictaphone machines.

They are, after all, very much a part of
how the technology was used.

Chuck

[rgordon939]

Did you buy the Dictaphone or did you just see it? I mainly collect cylinder machines but I also like business machines like these. I have three Edison Business Machines and I think ther have a absolutely amazing look. This is the nicest of the three. It is like new almost, and runs great. I also like shaving machines.

Rich Gordon

[De Soto Frank]

I have not bought it, Rich... since it seems to have little ( or no ? ) use for entertainment cylinders, I can't justify it at this point in time...

If I were to get one of the cylinder dictating machines, I think I would start with one that can both record and play-back...

That said, somewhere in my garage are a couple of Dictabelt machines and a box of unused Dictabelts that I pulled from a dumpster years ago...