About the Company
Diktat was a West German maker/brand of early office dictation tape recorders built by Continental‑Rundfunk GmbH in the mid‑1950s; surviving sources treat them as portable, mono dictation machines rather than as hi‑fi or studio reel‑to‑reel decks.
Company and brand relationship
Contemporary trade and technical magazines describe the Diktat dictation recorder as being manufactured by Continental‑Rundfunk GmbH, located in Osterode am Harz (and also referenced from Staßfurt) in West Germany.
These sources present Diktat as a product line or sales office (“Diktat‑Verkaufsbüro”) for office dictation equipment, with Continental‑Rundfunk as the actual electronics manufacturer supplying both the Diktat machines and an “Imperial” range of radios.
Recorder type and technical character
A collector directory entry for the Diktat 1 lists it as a vintage, tube‑based portable tape recorder using IEC equalization, single‑track mono format and made in Germany, clearly aimed at dictation and office use rather than high‑fidelity music recording.
A detailed German review of the Diktat D3 notes that it is a “Diktiergerät” (dictation machine) produced by Continental‑Rundfunk GmbH, emphasizing features needed for speech recording—compact form, office ergonomics—rather than wide‑band audio performance.
Production era and market role
The Diktat machines appear in German and British trade publications around 1955–1956, placing the main production window in the mid‑1950s, when wire and early tape‑based dictation systems were competing in offices.
Articles describe them as suitable “für Reise, Büro und Heim” (for travel, office and home) and explicitly in the context of dictation, which slots Diktat/Continental‑Rundfunk into the business‑machine and small‑tape‑recorder niche rather than the consumer hi‑fi market.
Extent of reel‑to‑reel activity
Apart from the Diktat dictation recorders and references to radios and test transmitters, there is no evidence that Continental‑Rundfunk developed a broader line of hi‑fi open‑reel decks comparable to Grundig, Uher or Telefunken; standard German R2R overviews list those brands in detail but only mention Continental‑Rundfunk in connection with Diktat.
Collector discussions highlight that even basic manufacturing details (e.g., whether some units were OEM‑built elsewhere) remain uncertain, reinforcing that Diktat/Continental‑Rundfunk was a small, lightly documented player whose tape activity was focused on dictation machines of the 1950s.
In summary, Diktat/Continental‑Rundfunk GmbH belongs to the early office‑dictation branch of reel‑to‑reel history: mid‑1950s German tube‑based portable recorders for speech, with no known continuation into later hi‑fi or studio tape‑deck production.