What device does Dr. John Seward use to record his diary in Dracula?

Dr. John Seward uses a phonograph to record his diary in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Seward’s diary is not written by hand in the usual way: he dictates entries into a phonograph, which records his voice on cylinders. Several sections of the novel are presented as transcriptions of these recordings, giving readers access to Seward’s observations as a doctor and as a witness to Lucy Westenra’s mysterious illness.

The device makes Seward’s record technologically distinctive within the novel’s documentary structure. Dracula combines handwritten journals, letters, telegrams, newspaper reports, memoranda, and recorded speech. Mina later listens to Seward’s cylinders and types their contents, making the information easier to search and compare with Jonathan Harker’s journal and other evidence.

A common mistake is “typewriter”: Mina uses a typewriter to transcribe and duplicate the material, but Seward records the original diary by phonograph. The phonograph also links the supernatural plot to late-Victorian modernity, showing how new technologies become tools for assembling evidence against an ancient vampire.