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What is a digital voice recorder?
This is a modern audio recording device that typically is portable, uses built-in microphone, and can store hours of recordings that can be later plaid back, organized, and edited.
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Olympus VN-5500PC Digital Voice Recorder!
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[02/06/2010] History of Voice Recorders
The history of voice recorders can be traced back to Thomas Edison and his tinfoil phonograph; while he was working on his telephone transmitter, he came up with the idea of recording telephone calls and later playing the recording back. After working on that idea for some time, he designed the first phonograph, which had a cylinder mounted on a shaft and the tinfoil, wrapped around that cylinder was the recording surface. His design materialized in 1887 and the Edison’s phonograph was constructed by the machinist John Kruesi; the first ever recorded speech was the tale "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and the very next day Edison presented his invention at the Scientific American’s offices. Even though absolutely astonishing for his time, the fact that tinfoil was used as a recorded media made the first phonograph not very practical since the tinfoil was easily destroyed, the sound quality poor, and the recordings could be played only a few times.
Edison’s phonograph was greatly improved by another great scientist and innovator, Alexander Graham Bell, who, together with his associates, introduced a wax recording cylinder that replaced the tinfoil cylinder; the sound was recorded by a steel stylus that engraved the waves into the wax. Alexander Bell, Charles Sumner Tainter, and Chichester Bell had constructed numerous experimental phonographs until the final model was built and patented; they also managed to develop cardboard cylinders, coated with wax that served as a foundation for the record cylinders. Recording on wax instead of foil improved dramatically the quality of the recorded sound, allowed for longer recordings and more playbacks.
In the early years of the twentieth century, the US market had two major companies that were selling recording equipment – the Edison’s company and Columbia Phonograph Company, and while the former marketed its product as Ediphone, the latter named theirs Dictaphone. Both companies were making constant changes and improvements to their products and the early hand-cranked models were later replaced with models that used clockwork motors and then electric motors.
The WW2 brought inevitable changes to most industries and the Dictaphone was naturally used by the military in the United States as well. This led to further improving of the recording technology and the introduction of a new recording surface – the vinyl belt! New entrants to the market at that time decided to use soft vinyl disks and this gave the birth of the Audograph, which was developed by Gray Manufacturing Company. The end of the war was followed by early attempts of magnetic recording, which were then improved and virtually became a World standard until the digital recording became possible.
The digital recorders, which are the most popular sound recorders today, were a result of improving computer technology and smaller memory chips. Digital recorders hold numerous advantages over any of the predeceasing technologies – once the sound is recorded, “jumping” to any point of the recording is not only possible, but done in a matter of seconds, unlike the magnetic tapes and audio cassettes that took quite some time to be rewound or fast-forwarded. Also, audio can be inserted at any point of the recording at a later stage, the quality of the recording is superb, and large audio files can be stored on physically small storage devices.