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retro futurism
A Machine That Types What Is Spoken To It, 1913
From time immemorial (or at least since the commercial production of the typewriter in 1873), office procedure went like this: the boss dictated, the steno took it down, and a typist translated the squiggles into type. In 1913, Mr. John B. Flowers, "a young electrical engineer of Brooklyn" did his best to eliminate the middlemen (or, most likely, middlewomen) with an early example of voice-activated technology. Click through for a closer look at Flowers's invention—and its limitations.More »
