The Industrial Revolution caused a revolution in the office as well. Suddenly companies had to cope with large bulks of information. The old way was the shopkeeper who did his own financial administration. The second half of the nineteenth century was the era of the rise of big companies (the industrial revolution came relatively late in the Netherlands). Large companies soon decided to open separate, central offices to do all the paperwork. This was the beginning of the modern office as a separate space only for administrative purposes. Office work became a separate, specialized profession.

Typewriters
Paper typewriter with bell
Police station typewriter
Typewriting room and talking
Typewriter mechanical / letter
Mechanical typewriter and ping
Typewriting room
Typewriter

Very soon all kinds of appliances entered the modern office. One of the first was the typewriter. It turned out to be ideal for the fast copying of already-prepared text. Typists could make a decent piece of text out of drafts from the boss. Using sheets of carbon paper could provide several copies at a time. Big companies often had seperate typing rooms with people who did nothing else but typing text. Sometimes they even entered the office on a dictaphone roll. (see: Audio equipment)
Typewriting soon became typical women's labour. It was considered as a fashionable job for a woman. Lots of women took office jobs in the beginning of the century. Above all, employing women was cheap; employers considered women te get married anyway so they did not take any responsibilities for pensions.
In 1874 the Remington company launched its first typewriter. Its breakthrough came around 1880, when a typewriter with character arms was produced which made typed text immediately readable.

Typing lessons Typing rooms needed trained personnel and so special typing schools were opened, often by typewriter factories themselves. Typing lessons almost always were combined with a course in stenography. On the recordings, lightning-fast typing is heard as well as inexperienced typing. And consider that a mechanical typewriter operates much heavier than a modern computer keyboard.

Other machines

Pneumatic post dispatch Big office or bank buildings sometimes had pneumatic post dispatch systems. A network of pipes throughout the building carried cases with for example documents or money. The items were sent by means of air pressure. This recording has been made at a telephone exchange. It not only contains the sounds of the dispatch system but also the background noise of this place.

Postage machine
A company that has to send large amounts of mail needs an appliance to put stamps on letters. Postage machines came in widespread use around the 1920Ős.

Pencil
sharpener with handle May be convenient for sharpening lots of pencils

Stamp
This is the sound of a mechanical stamp with built-in ink pad. It consists of a handle with the actual stamp suspended beneath it. The stamp can have a few rubber wheels with different characters on it so that it can be, for example, a date stamp. The actual stamp stands face up and touches the ink pad which is attached right underneath the handle. By pushing the whole thing on a piece of paper, the suspension mechanism tilts the inked stamp face down onto the paper and back. On the recording you can hear the mechanism tilting and the stamp touching the paper. At least in the Netherlands, bus drivers still use these kinds of stamps, but they have practically altogether vanished from the office.

Stencil machine
Reproducing texts always has been a problem. Everybody knows the example of medieval monks writing copies of bible books. Since the invention of book printing this practice has become obsolete, but still there was no easy, cheap way of making relatively small amounts of the same document. In 1881, David Gestetner invented stencil printing. The original should be made on a strong but porous piece of paper which is coated with wax. The wax can be scratched away with a pen or a typewriter. Next, the paper is to be attached to a rotating drum, the waxed side inside. The drum contains an inking mechanism. When the drum rotates, it transports and prints pieces of paper with copies of the original. On the recording one can hear a few dozen copies being stenciled. Everytime the mechanic noise can be heard, as well as the rustling of paper and a click.

Cosser letterpress 1935
Copying press, which is a kind of stenciling machine. It has no rotating drum so the reproduction process is a little bit slower. At the beginning of the recording a bell is rung.

Photocopying machine
The photocopying machine came after the stenciling machine. From the 1970Ős it has been in widespread use. The principle of electrostatic priting has been invented as early as 1938 by an American called Chester Carlson. According to this principle, a surface is being charged with positive static electricity. Onto the surface a system of mirrors and lenses projects an image of an original. Only the part that is touched by the light loses its charge. The non-illuminated part, which corresponds to the image, remains charged positively. Next, pigment is being put onto the surface, and it only attaches itself to the loaded surface. Finally the surface makes an imprint onto a piece of paper and the pigment gets fixed by means of heat.
The principle of electrostatic printing has not changed much since then. But copying machines have gotten quieter, faster and more versatile all the time. The machine on the recording is an old one that makes a lot of noise. You can hear a loud grunting of the electric engines and the squeeking and rattling of (probably) the paper transport mechanism.