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"The Dictograph Hears All": An Example of Surveillance Technology in the Progressive Era
By Kathryn W. Kemp, Clayton State University
During the first decade of the twentieth century, Kelley M. Turner of New York invented a telephone apparatus of very high sound sensitivity, which he called the "Dictograph." (It should not be confused with the Dictaphone, a device used to record dictation.) Although his original idea was for a communications system with a great variety of applications, the Dictograph ultimately became one of the earliest electric eavesdropping devices, used by both police and private investigators. As such, the Dictograph played a part in some notable criminal prosecutions and was used in antiunion activity. It continued to be used in this way until it was rendered obsolescent by other technologies. The emergence of the preferred applications of the Dictograph illuminates aspects of the sociology of technology, such as the concept of "acoustic space." It also raised issues related to the ethics and law of clandestine listening.
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Listening in on the private conversations of others is probably as old as human speech itself. It is hardly surprising that when modern communications equipment first came into widespread use, a technology of snooping also developed. By the turn of the twentieth century, government officials, police, rival newspapermen, market speculators, and even horse players—in short, anyone who wanted access to private information—might secretly tap into communications carried on telegraph or telephone lines. The next step was to eavesdrop on face-to-face conversations by using hidden microphones. One such listening device, called the "Dictograph," patented during the first decade of the twentieth century by Kelley M. Turner of New York, was a telephone apparatus of very high sensitivity.1 Although its original conception was as an office communications system, the Dictograph ultimately became one of the earliest electric eavesdropping devices. Whether Turner himself or some other person originated this use remains unclear, but the practice of "dictographing" private conversations largely supplanted the original vision of the inventor. |
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In 1905 Turner staged the first public demonstration of his invention, which he then called a "Multigraph"; two years later, he began to manufacture and market this equipment under the "Dictograph" trademark.2 Turner's devices, which used electric current to carry information, were a logical extension of the earlier telegraphic and telephonic systems. The first telegraph operators tapped a key to close an electric circuit; elsewhere on the circuit, an electromagnetic stylus responded by striking a paper tape. The operator's touch controlled the length of the signal to the stylus, producing patterns such as the familiar dot-dash of Morse Code. As operators gained proficiency they realized that they could disregard the impressions on the paper because they could recognize the sound patterns of the stylus striking its target. Telephones also transform a physical action by changing the subtle vibration of sound waves into electric signals. These travel to a speaker (receiver), which converts them back into audible form. (An interesting early experiment in sound transmission used a diaphragm attached to bones taken from a human middle ear, which in turn vibrated a stylus to mark sound waves on a smoked glass plate.)3 |
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