From ancient forums to modern office towers, when people are called upon to make speeches, deliver presentations or give testimony, the spoken words have to be recorded and written down for official use. The earliest tool utilized for this purpose was a well-trained memory. In more modern times, transcription was aided by the development of stenography and, later, stenotype machines.

   Now, advances in voice recognition have made possible a major new leap in the technology. The process is called “voice writing”. The equipment consists of a small hand-held “silencer” attached to a laptop equipped with speech recognition software.

   At a meeting or conference, the voice writer speaks into the small silencer, repeating word for word what is being said by the parties present. The silencer prevents the voice writer from being overheard by those seated at the conference table. The dialogue, repeated noiselessly by the voice writer, simultaneously scrolls down the laptop screen as text. Later, the voice writer edits the text. The laptop also accommodates a sound track of the participants, thus ensuring a truly verbatim rendition of the proceeding.


 

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