In the early 40's, the engineers at Dictaphone
Corporation developed a new recording media using a tube of very thin
plastic. When the tube was cut, it created a continuos loop or belt of
plastic. Audio could be empressed on to the belt using a needle type stylus
to emboss or plow a groove in the soft plastic. And the Dictabelt recording
media was born. However, soon after this the world would be once again
involved in another war; and the engineers and assembly workers at Dictaphone
went to work for the war effort to design and build radio monitoring and
audio logging equipment to help the Allies break the German and Japanese
codes. After the war, Dictaphone went back to its primary business of
providing high quality dictating equipment. In the late 40's and early
50's Dictaphone brought the Dictabelt down off the shelf and started manufacturing
a new generation of dictating machines that would replace the original
Dictaphone Wax Cylinder Machine |
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Early users of the Dictabelt were Presidents
Eisenhower and Kennedy. In the early 60's the State of Virginia mandated
that all of its Circuit Courts be outfitted with Dictabelt machines to
be able "to record the proceeding on a non-erasable media".
The Dictabelt recording machines were produced up until the mid 70's when
Dictaphone introduced some of the best magnetic tape recorders specifically
for the office. However, Dictabelt machines were in use till the late
80's and early 90's. They were liked because the audio could not be erased
once the belt was recorded. |
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Early users of the Dictabelt were Presidents
Eisenhower and Kennedy. In the early 60's the State of Virginia mandated
that all of its Circuit Courts be outfitted with Dictabelt machines to
be able "to record the proceeding on a non-erasable media".
The Dictabelt recording machines were produced up until the mid 70's when
Dictaphone introduced some of the best magnetic tape recorders specifically
for the office. However, Dictabelt machines were in use till the late
80's and early 90's. They were liked because the audio could not be erased
once the belt was recorded. |
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During the 40 plus years of the Dictabelt recorders, many executives would bring their Dictabelt recorder home to record their family life. These belts were treasured keepsakes and were played and shared. Then they would be placed in a file or a drawer and forgotten. Till someone moved or had to clean out an old desk and they would discover these once precious belts. However, the problem now was to find a method of hearing these memories again, because the machine that recorded the belts was now long gone. About fifteen years ago, an engineer working at Dictaphone realized that people were going to need a way to retrieve these memories. Working with some old Dictaphone equipment, the engineer was able to set up a process to recover the audio from the belts and record it to a modern recording media such as a cassette or computer CD. |
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