Postwar Diversity

As a few firms, such as Soundscriber, threatened  to disrupt the once-stable U.S. dictation machine market with advanced-looking new products, Dictaphone in 1947 responded with its new Time Master dictation machine. Using a new plastic belt instead of a wax cylinder, the Time Master was restyled to appear sleeker and more modern. These “Dictabelt” machines still used a phonographic recording process, but the plastic belts were not re-usable. Edison countered with the Voicewriter, which used a vinyl disk. Meanwhile, the Soundscriber and the Gray Audograph captured a sizable chunk of the market in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, much of it at Edison’s expense. Meanwhile, important new technologies appeared, particularly magnetic tape and wire recording. The Peirce wire recorder was one of the first wire recorder dictation machines to appear after 1945. Overall, the U.S. market ten years after the end of World War II was still dominated by the Edison and Dictaphone Companies, but there was much more competition.