The Telegraphone at the Franklin Institute (1908)
1 2013-12-13T18:03:12-08:00 Jentery Sayers becbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339 249 3 Charles K. Fankhauser, Journal of the Franklin Institute (1909), 37 plain 2013-12-19T08:46:26-08:00 Jentery Sayers becbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339This page has paths:
- 1 2013-11-26T14:30:08-08:00 Jentery Sayers becbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339 Media Jentery Sayers 6 All Media for Making the Perfect Record, American Literature 85.4 (December 2013), http://10.1215/00029831-2370230, Duke U P plain 8387 2013-12-19T08:58:37-08:00 Jentery Sayers becbfb529bffcfafdfad6920ed57b30ccdca5339
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- 1 2013-10-14T12:03:12-07:00 The Human Stenographer 6 The Limits of Human Stenographers Are Highlighted in the August 1913 Issue of the Independent plain 2013-12-30T08:44:09-08:00 In an August 1913 issue of the Independent, the limits of human stenographers working in similar situations are actually highlighted: “The advantages of [the telegraphone] for international conventions is [sic] obvious. It is very hard to get stenographers competent to take down the discussions in four or more languages. The Copenhagen congress was in session forty hours altogether and occupied two adjoining rooms, but all of the papers and discussions were duly recorded on the 250 kilometers of piano wire” (“The Telegraphone”). (This note comments on the page titled, “Imagining Applications,” as well as the attached image titled, “The Telegraphone at the Franklin Institute (1908).”)
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Widespread Technical Applications
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Fankhauser projects that the telegraphone will radically change most aspects of social life
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At the Franklin Institute on December 16, 1908, Fankhauser presented the telegraphone, speaking little about its material specificities and instead favoring a hyperbolic assessment of its potential applications for occupations involving listening and inscription.37 In a written version of the talk, published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute in January 1909, he says: “I believe that the next few years will see a telegraphone installed in the office of every doctor, every lawyer, every banker, in the counting room of every trust company, and of every industrial or commercial establishment, large or small” (Fankhauser 1909, 41). He also predicts that the telegraphone will render typewriting and letter writing obsolete, and he dramatizes the range of its reach through a variety of conjectures. In railroading, the device will replace the telegraph; for stock quotations, it will supplant the telephone; in medicine, it will diagnose heart and lung ailments; and it will bring about the demise of stenographers in all realms of dictation.38 That is, all realms but one: justice. Fankhauser states: “While the human stenographer may never be eliminated in important legal proceedings, it is highly probable that an additional check will be kept in every court room by the installation of a telegraphone which will eliminate all chances of human mistakes” (44).39 When it comes to standing before the law, a faith in the medium faces its limits.At the turn of the century, even a technocrat is unwilling to reduce justice to pure science, and in the courtroom the telegraphone is relegated from a producer of perfect records to a validation machine. If nothing else, this snippet of Fankhauser’s work exemplifies the various ways in which early magnetic recording was actively tied to the construction of human perception and memory. Fankhauser’s claim that stenographers will persist amid technological progress corresponds with occupation-specific modes of listening and writing, as well as the memory training and embodied habits associated with them. What’s more, it corresponds with the imagined range and robustness of the telegraphone’s diverse applications, however speculative they happened to be.
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Potential Applications
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A Working Model of the Telegraphone Was Presented to Attendees of Fankhauser's Franklin Institute Talk
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After the talk, a demonstration of the telegraphone (both the wire-based and disk-based versions) was given. Fankhauser was an official agent of the American Telegraphone Company.(This note comments on the page titled, “Imagining Applications,” as well as the attached image titled, “The Telegraphone at the Franklin Institute (1908).”)
- 1 2013-10-14T11:46:59-07:00 A Variety of Conjectures 5 Fankhauser Conjectures about the Future of the Telegraph, the Telephone, and Commercial Stenography in Light of the Telegraphone's Emergence plain 2013-12-30T08:42:52-08:00 On the limits of the telegraph, Fankhauser (1909, 41) claims: “Already the telegraph . . . is on the wane; but its complete substitution has heretofore been impossible because of the fact that it is absolutely necessary on important divisions that there should be evidence.” On the limits of the telephone: “It has always been a drawback to the general use of the telephone, that the messages transmitted have been wholly evanescent, that it has been impossible to preserve or present an authentic record of conversation over the wire” (40). On the rise of mechanical or commercial stenography: “The field here is growing constantly, as it has been demonstrated that there may be effected not alone an enormous saving in actual money, but in time, and accuracy, that is, with the aid of the talk-machine, the correspondent can dictate from two to three times as many letters as he can through the medium of the stenographer” (43). (This note comments on the page titled, “Imagining Applications,” as well as the attached image titled, “The Telegraphone at the Franklin Institute (1908).”)