Some time last year I was watching an episode of the 1960s series Arrest and Trial that involved a court martial when I saw this:

Yes, that’s Chuck Conners in the foreground, but it’s the fellow in the background holding what seems to be a mask of some sort over his mouth and nose that interested me.

Here’s a closer look:

What was it?

Being a veteran of hundreds of courtroom dramas as well as my personal experience as a juror in a half dozen actual court proceedings, I was well aware of court reporters and their stenotype machines. Court reporters were the “most important person in the courtroom” as one judge put it, because they had to take down verbatim everything that transpired during the trial. Afterwards the lawyers relied on the trial transcripts in filing their appeals, if any.

But what was this contraption that the military officer was using during the dramatized court martial? And why had I never seen it before?

It turns out that it’s called a stenomask, and according to Wikipedia

A stenomask is a hand-held microphone built into a padded, soundproof enclosure that fits over the speaker’s mouth or nose. Some lightweight versions may be fitted with an elastic neck strap to hold them in place while freeing the user’s hands for other tasks. The purpose of a stenomask is to allow a person to speak without being heard by other people, and to keep background noise away from the microphone. It’s a microphone with the ability to filter out background noise.

A stenomask is useful for speech recognition applications, because it allows voice transcription in noisy environments. Perhaps more importantly, a stenomask silences the user’s voice so that it does not interfere with the surrounding environment such as a court or a classroom. The user can verbally identify the speaker, indicate gestures and unspoken answers, and describe activities as they take place.

Stenomasks were developed in the 1940s and subsequently the United States Navy deemed them to be the most accurate method of transcription and so adopted them for their court proceedings. They also apparently require a shorter training period than the stenotype machine.

Even with modern technology of video cameras being able to record entire proceedings, there’s still the need for printed (or digital) transcriptions of the trial.

I’m not sure whether they are used exclusively for all military trial proceedings or not, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in any other dramatized court martial. 

Here’s an example from L.A. Law:

Notice the court reporter seems to be using a regular stenotype machine.

Do you know of any examples of the stenomask being used in a dramatized court martial?