Ediphone (Thomas Edison's Dictaphone ) Company 1920's - SCARCE

Beautifully engraved SCARCE unissued Certificate from the Ediphone Service Incorporated printed in 1928. This historic document has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the State of New Jersey Coat of Arms. Thomas Edison's operations were located in New Jersey. This item and is over 75 years old. There were only 100 of these certificates ever printed and only 10 of them were issued.

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in the 1870's using a tinfoil based cylinder. Subsequently, wax cylinders became the standard and Edison adapted accordingly. As a natural progression of his idea, Edison invented the Ediphone to compete with the Columbia Graphophone Product called the Dictiphone. The product's purpose was to record dictation for letters and notes so a secretary could later type it buy loading a cylinder in their machine. This would avoid the costly need for a stenographer.


Early Ediphone Advertisement

The Ediphone had a tube to speak in and the voice vibrations would be recorded on a wax cylinder. A secretary would then type up the recording and then shave the used layer of the cylinder so it could be reused.


Thomas Edison using an early Ediphone