they play?   2. Practice the pronunciation of the words from the text. When in doubt use

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lic gaze, including the spare cylinders stored beneath the actual mechanics. 
When it was redesigned the designer did nothing to the way in which it func-
tioned, but a good deal to improve the way it looked. It remained, however, a 
fairly bulky item of furniture. 
What really changed the nature of dictating machines was the coming of 
the battery-powered recorder. The smallest of these were enough to be slipped 
in a pocket, and certainly into a briefcase, and did not require an external mi-
crophone. The busy executive could take one with him anywhere. Essentially 
the process whereby the dictaphone evolved was one in which the designer 
followed rather than led. He tried to find appropriate forms for the possibilities 
which technologists made available. 
The first rotary duplicator was introduced in 1903, and it was manually 
operated. It has the technical simplicity, directness and functional logic of the 
best early typewriters. Like them, it kept the working parts exposed so that 
they were easy to service.
These duplicators look remarkably primitive when compared to the photo-
copiers which are now extensively employed. The duplicator with its wax 
stencil was something whose workings the operator could understand. The 
photocopying machine remains mysterious, and becomes steadily more so as it 
becomes ever more sophisticated. 
An even stranger fate is in the process of overtaking the typewriter. The 
Underwood No. 1 typewriter of 1897 was a sturdy basic machine designed to 
stand up to a lot of hard use. This and similar models set a standard which 
lasted for half a century, and were subject only to the kind of cleaning-up 
process which overtook design in the 30s. The first radical change was the 
electrification of the typewriter. It was very little different from a manual 
model from the user's point of view. There was another hiatus before the elec-
tric typewriter was followed in turn by machines which were not only electric 
but electronic. These models did away the conventional array of keys, which 
was replaced by a golf-ball unit carrying the complete alphabet and any other 
necessary symbols. The final stage of the typewriter's evolution is the word 
processor. Here a use of computer technology enables the operator to record 
and store a text, and to recall and correct any part of it at will. Word proces-
sors are already undergoing the ritual process of miniaturization.
Computer technology now enables machines to undertake tasks which 
would have been considered impossible only a short time ago. Some of their 
functions are so complex that it still seems astonishing that they can be carried 
out mechanically. 
Perhaps it is a reflection of the astonishment felt by the designers them-
selves that some computer designs carry inexpressiveness to a deliberate ex-

66
treme. The box with its discreetly ranged set of keys yields its secret only to 
the thoroughly instructed and initiated. In fact, given the nature of microchips 
and of computer circuitry in general, it is in any case very difficult for the de-
signer to seek for an expressive form. 
Nevertheless, it must also be recognized that the industrial designer's role 
in creating such things has in fact altered to a remarkably small extent though 
the actual technology may now be much more advanced.
To accomplish his task successfully he has to think of two things –
ergonomics in the broad sense (that is, not only the way in which human bodies 
are constructed but about things such as reaction time); and what the object it-
self is supposed to accomplish. His aim is to harness the user to the used in the 
smoothest, simplest and most painless way. This means taking into account 
mental states as well as physical facts. Office machines, like machines in the 
home or even in the factory, need less and less physical effort on the part of the 
user. But a machine will be tiring, or annoying to use if it is not possible to 
grasp quickly and easily a basic principle of use. Too many designs for office 
equipment fail because the equipment is efficient once you have mastered it, 
but impossible to fathom if you are unfamiliar with the way it operates. An im-
portant part of modern design work is, therefore, to discover ways of seeing to 
it that the object educates the user in terms of its own use. This in turn means 
that the designer is often the traditionalist as well as the innovator in a team 
which yokes the designer on the one side to the technologist or engineer on the 
other. The engineer is anxious to create ab initio; the designer, perhaps surpris-
ingly, must ask himself what is established in this particular field, and how 
people use it. It is much easier to teach someone to use a new machine if they 
can make a connection with a machine they already know how to use. 

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