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A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for later...

A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for later playback or to be typed into print. The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark of the company of the same name, but has also become a common term for all dictation machines, as a genericized trademark. Sometimes when the general term rather than the specific company is referred to, the variation "dictophone" is used. Shortly after Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device for recording sound, in 1877, he thought that the main use for the new device would be for recording speech in business settings. (Given the low audio fidelity of earliest versions of the phonograph, recording music may not have seemed to be a major application.) Some early phonographs were indeed used this way, but this did not become common until the mass production of reusable wax cylinders in the late 1880s. The differentiation of office dictation devices from other early phonographs (which commonly had attachments for making one's own recordings) was gradual. The machine marketed by the Edison Records company was trademarked as the "Ediphone". Electric microphones generally replaced the strictly acoustical