American Telegraphone Company 1917 - Early Wire Recorder

Beautifully engraved certificate from the American Telephone Company issued in 1917. The certificate has a vignette of the company's name in clouds. This historic document is hand signed by the Company’s President and Secretary and is over 86 years old.

In 1889, a Danish inventor Valdemar Poulsen developed the principle of magnetic recording. Over the course of the next few years he produced practical sound recorders for steel wire and tape. He filed for patents in Denmark, the United States, and elsewhere and attempted to sell his patent rights to investors. The machine, called the Telegraphone utilized a steel wire wound helically on a cylinder rotating under an electromagnet connected to a carbon microphone or an earphone. It was described as a device to record telephone messages in the absence the called party.

In 1900, Poulsen's first major demonstration of the Telegraphone takes place at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900. The Telegraphone is described in glowing terms by the technical and scientific press as superior to the phonograph and a great advance in physics as well.

In 1903, the American Telegraphone Company formed in Washington, D.C.to manufacture the Telegraphone. A manufacturing facility in Wheeling, West Virginia was set up to make the machines, and the company made a large public stock offering. American Telegraphone created several distributorships across the country to handle service and sales. Telegraphone was sold publicity over the next decade and promoted the various models of the machine as a dictation system and an automatic telephone recorder.