Answering machine
An answering machine, answerphone, or message machine, also known as telephone messaging machine (or TAM) in the UK and some Commonwealth countries, ansaphone or ansafone (from a trade name), or telephone answering device (TAD), is used for answering telephone calls and recording callers' messages. When a telephone rings a set number of times predetermined by the call's recipient the answering machine will activate and play either a generic announcement or a customized greeting created by the recipient. Unlike voicemail, an answering machine is placed at the user's premises alongside—or incorporated within—the user's landline telephone, and unlike operator messaging, the caller does not talk to a human. As landlines become less important due to the shift to cell phone technology, and as unified communications evolve, the installed base of TADs is shrinking. History Most 20th-century answering machines used magnetic recording, which Valdemar Poulsen invented in 1898. The creation of the first practical automatic answering device for telephones, however, is in dispute. Starting in 1930, Clarence Hickman worked for Bell Laboratories, where he developed methods for magnetic recording and worked on the recognition of speech patterns and electromechanical switching systems. In 1934, he developed a tape-based answering machine which phone company AT&T, as the owner of Bell Laboratories, kept under wraps for years for fear that an answering machine would result in fewer telephone calls. Many claim the answering machine was invented by William Muller in 1935, but it may already have been created in 1931 by William Schergens whose device used phonographic cylinders. Schergens' device is featured in Behind the Mask (1932 film). Ludwig Blattner promoted a telephone answering machine in 1929 based on his Blattnerphone magnetic recording technology. In 1935, inventor Benjamin Thornton developed a machine to record voice messages from the caller. The device reportedly also was able to keep track of the time the recordings were made. Although many sources maintain that he invented it in 1935, Thornton had actually filed a patent in 1930 (Number 1831331) for this machine, which utilized a phonographic record as the recording medium. A commercial answering machine, the Tel-Magnet, offered in the United States in 1949, played outgoing messages and recorded incoming messages on a magnetic wire. It was priced at $200 but was not a commercial success. In 1949, the first commercially successful answering machine was the Electronic Secretary created by inventor Joseph Zimmerman and businessman George W. Danner, who founded Electronic Secretary Industries in Wisconsin. The Electronic Secretary used the then state-of-the-art technology of a 45 rpm record player for announcements and a wire recorder for message capture and playback. Electronic Secretary Industries was purchased in 1957 by General Telephone and Electronics. Another commercially successful answering machine was the Ansafone created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto, who was employed by a company called Phonetel. This company began selling the first answering machines in the US in 1960. Another early model known as the Code-a-Phone was introduced in 1966. Answering machines became more widely used after the restructuring of AT&T in