Transcriber Machine Technology Advances

Before the 1930s and 1940s, physicians either wrote all their medical documentations directly in the chart or dictated in person to secretaries. Shorthand was a skill much more valued for medical secretaries doing medical transcription. Transcribing machines began to be manufactured directly for clerical use, although poor in sound quality and not no easy to use, physicians could use them to dictate their letters, hospital records and any other document at any time anywhere.

Then came the mylar tape machines which started the great explosion in transcriber efficiency. This was a great advantage to the transcriptionist in that the sound quality was much improved.

The standard cassette transcriber was introduced in 1970 and measured about 4 by 2 ½ inches. The main advantages of this transcriber were the fact that the tape was fully contained in a plastic box. Previously MTs had to work directly with feeding tape from one spool to another. Standard cassette tapes were easily produced and took much less room. Fortunately I started transcribing medical dictation using the standard cassette transcriber. I never worked with feeding tape from one spool to another.

The mini cassette was introduced, was much smaller in size than the standard cassette transcriber, measuring about 2 ¼ by 1 ¼ inches. The mini cassette required a very small spool of tape and became popular for portable dictating machines.

The micro cassette measures 2 inches in length and is otherwise unchanged from the original mini design.

Digital dictation is a system that eliminates even mylar recording tape. The result is a system that is without background noise, hiss, or other extraneous sounds found on regular mylar tape.

All the advances in medical transcription equipment help the medical transcriptionist do their medical tasks with much more ease and efficiency.