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“The Dictograph Hears All”: An Example of Surveillance Technology in the Progressive Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Kathryn W. Kemp
Kathryn W. Kemp
Affiliation:
Clayton State University
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Extract

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.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 409 - 430
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2007

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References

1 In spite of the similarity of the names, the Dictograph and the Dictophone lack any close connection. Turner's Dictograph most closely resembles the telephone and was used for realtime communication, while the Dictophone most closely resembles the phonograph and was used to record dictation for transcription.

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36 “Report of Operatives J.W.W and A.F.W,” June 9, 1914, ms 004-134, FBCM digital collection.

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39 Oney, Steve, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the lynching of Leo Frank (New York, 2003), 104–13.Google Scholar Frank, having been condemned in a dubious court proceeding to hang for the murder of his teenaged employee, Mary Phagan, was reprieved by Georgia's Governor John M. Slayton, only to be abducted and lynched before he could pursue legal appeals.

40 lbid., 109.

41 It is circumstantially interesting that the General Acoustic Company's offices in Manhattan were in the Candler Building, which was the property of Atlanta millionaire Asa Candler, a director of the compan y that operated Atlanta's streetcars; and in addition, a 1924 letterhead for the Railway Audit and Inspection company (cited above) shows that it had several offices, including one in the Candler building located in New York and a second in the Atlanta Candler Building. However, no direct evidence linking Candler to Dictograph use has emerged. For more on Candler's varied career, Kemp, Kathryn W, God's Capitalist: Asa Candler of Coca-Cola (Macon, GA, 2002)Google Scholar.

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