Answering Machines - Don't Call Me, I'll Call You!

You would think with all the zest humans have for the next great thing, that once it comes along, we might appreciate it more. But the only thing that comes faster then new technology, is how soon people move on to the next thing. The phone was one of the greatest inventions ever. You would think that when it came along, that people fell in love with it. Imagine, being able to talk to people that you normally couldn't speak to, unless they came for a visit. Being able to keep in touch with family and friends that lived far away. How could people ever tire of answering their phones? Well, they did grow tired of answering the phones, and apparently in a big way.

For every problem, we would like to have a solution, and the solution for that ringing phone that you can't, or don't want to pick up, is the answering machine. The phone was invented in 1876. In 1898, a Danish inventor named Valdemar Poulsen, was given a patent for a machine he called a telegraphone. This was widely considered the first piece of equipment that could magnetically record sound and reproduce it. Valdemar later designed a model that could answer the phone and record a message, automatically. And thus, the telephone answering machine had arrived.

In the 1920s, the telephone service providers in Europe and the U.S. had different ways of looking at the use of answering machines. In Europe, the market was wide open and many inventors were trying to take part in this new field. But the U.S. market appeared closed. AT&T had a monopoly and actually banned the use of early versions of answering machines on the public network. They only allowed them to be used on private or independent systems.

AT&T kept fighting to protect its monopoly, but the end of World War II brought change. The FCC was under pressure from inventors, so in 1949, they ruled that automatic answering machines could be used on AT&T lines, but there were restrictions on which machines could be used and who controlled their use. Realizing their fate, AT&T began offering answering machines to their customers by 1951. Even though Europe took a liking to the answering machine, before the U.S., by the 1960s the U.S. market for answering machines was probably larger then Europe.

The 1970s saw the answering machine become cheaper and cheaper because of the use of microelectronics. The 1980s saw answering machines flood into the market; most were made by Asian firms, or made by them and sold under U.S. trade names. Since the 1980s, the number of U.S. homes with answering machines have leveled off.

Nowadays, the answering machine is used less to record calls and used more to screen calls. Telemarketers have gotten out of hand. They call people every hour of the day, even on weekends and you throw in the internet, where apparently private information is there for public viewing, no one knows who's calling. The answering machine is being used more as a utility for safety, then it is for its original intended purpose; which I think was to record calls from people we actually wanted to speak to.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Answering Machines