Some birders used Dictaphones and similar devices to keep track of their sightings, writing their observations up later in logs and journals. Subsequently, digital voice recording, especially on mobile phones, replaced tape-based machines.
63 : Dictaphone Travel-Master
1965
Some birders used Dictaphones and similar devices to keep track of their sightings, writing their observations up later in logs and journals. Subsequently, digital voice recording, especially on mobile phones, replaced tape-based machines.
While most birders in the Sixties opted to transcribe their notes and observations in time-honoured fashion in notebooks and journals, another option emerged entirely by chance. Though it was never widely adopted, a minority embraced the technology of the touch-typist to keep ‘live’ aides memoire, using a Dictaphone.
Though the trade name had been around since 1907, the first compact and portable tape recorder under the name was released in 1947. But it was another 18 years until the most popular model, the Dictaphone Travel-Master, was launched. First issued in 1965, it could be powered by batteries and record up to an hour’s worth of ‘notes’ – perfect for use in the field.
Other small portable machines were produced by Philips, using full-sized standard blank music cassettes, and Olympus, which opted for micro-cassettes, themselves also adapted for telephone answering machines (see pages 92–93). Dictaphone answered its rivals by developing the Pico cassette for the dictation industry, enabling the company to reduce the size of its recorders in turn.
Through the 1970s, music tape recorders and players were also diminishing in size, and the most popular and famous of these was released onto the market by Sony in 1979: The Walkman. The machine was small enough to be fitted into a jacket pocket or even attached to a belt, and also came kitted out with headphones and microphones. The brand dominated the mobile music retail scene of the 1980s, powered by cheap alkaline batteries and a burgeoning cassette market. The best quality machine was the Walkman Professional, introduced in 1982, which became frequently used by amateur wildlife sound recordists.
The advent of digital recording in the 1990s saw the Walkman gradually eclipsed by the MiniDisc, another Sony innovation launched in 1992 which could hold up to 80 minutes of recorded data (equivalent to a CD in sound terms). The recording quality was not as good as a CD, and that clarity of reproduction awaited the later introduction of linear PCM (pulse-code modulation) digital recording. MiniDiscs ceased production in March 2013.
Digital voice recorders were launched in 1991 and survive to this day, being able to record up to eight hours of sound on several different tracks, and possessing most of the other benefits of modern recording such as instant rewind and fast forward, and the marking of tracks for later reference.
All these devices have been used for oral note-taking by birders, usually being written up as hard copy when the user gets home. But all have now been eclipsed by mobile phones, which can record several hours of voice and even bird song for storage, download, editing or transcription. However, joint ‘old school’ portable dictation and bird sound recording partly lives on in the form of a 21st century invention, Remembird. This novel device attaches between the two barrels of a binocular, and the small microphone inside it records the sounds of the bird under observation, as well as the user’s own ‘of the moment’ commentary, if desired. Remembird has a ‘rolling’ recording method – in which everything is recorded while watching, and retained for eight seconds before the recording is triggered – a close ‘mic’ for spoken observations and an audio field guide for many regions of the globe.
Despite its nifty convenience and novel design, Remembird will no longer be manufactured and company support will stop in 2015, making the device perhaps another victim of the rapidly evolving digital revolution.