What do we mean by "Gendered" Technology?

The technical and economic histories of office dictation equipment are told elsewhere one this site (see the start page). What we're looking at here is the way that the basic technology of sound recording was divided into two separate parts - a men's part and a women's part. Today, when we look at current recording technologies such as CD burners or MP3 files, it is difficult to see how gender could have played any role in their history. Most assuredly, gender roles shaped the history of all sorts of sound recording technologies, but the process is most obvious in the history of office dictation machines.

Thomas Edison had invented the phonograph in 1877, but after demonstrating it had moved on to other projects, most notably his system of electric lighting. Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter picked up the ball a few years later, and developed an improved version of the phonograph, naming it the graphophone. Instead of tinfoil wrapped around a cylinder, the graphophone used a cylinder made of wax, which resulted in better recordings.

Edison wasn't too pleased when he found out, and in 1878 he hastily invented an "improved phonograph," which incorporated many features that were similar to the graphophone.

The two machines, phonograph and graphophone, were offered for sale in the late 1870s as a mechanical replacement for the stenographer.