Postwar Diversity

After the end of World War II, several companies such as Soundscriber and Gray Manufacturing aggressively sought to unseat the Dictaphone and Ediphone. Their advanced-looking new products contrasted with the stodgy cylinder machines. Dictaphone in 1947 responded with its new Time Master dictation machine. The “Time Master” used the plastic belt that Dictaphone had developed a few years earlier and 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 like the wax cylinders. Edison countered Dictaphone with its new Voicewriter, which used a thin vinyl disk. Despite these new offerings from the industry leaders, the Soundscriber and the Gray Audograph captured a sizable portion of the American market (which was by far the largest)  in the late 1940s and the 1950s, much of it, apparently at Edison’s expense for reasons that are not clear. Meanwhile, important new technologies appeared, particularly magnetic tape and wire recording. Several companies sought to make magnetic recording the new, favored dictation technology. 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.