Answering machines – Don’t call me, I’ll call you!

One would think with all the enthusiasm humans have for the next big thing, that once it arrives, we might appreciate it more. But the only thing that comes faster than new technology is how quickly people move on to the next thing. The telephone was one of the greatest inventions in history. One would think that when he appeared, people fell in love with him. Imagine being able to talk to people you wouldn’t normally be able to talk to, unless they came to visit. Being able to keep in touch with family and friends who lived far away. How could people get tired of answering their phones? Well, they got 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 phone that rings and you can’t or don’t want to answer is the answering machine. The telephone was invented in 1876. In 1898, a Danish inventor named Valdemar Poulsen obtained a patent for a machine he called the telegraph. This was widely considered to be the first piece of equipment that could record sound magnetically and play it back. Valdemar then designed a model that could answer the phone and record a message, automatically. And so, the telephone answering machine had arrived.

In the 1920s, telephone service providers in Europe and the US had different views on the use of answering machines. In Europe, the market was completely open and many inventors were trying to participate in this new field. But the US market seemed 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 stand-alone systems.

AT&T continued to fight to protect its monopoly, but the end of World War II brought changes. The FCC was under pressure from inventors, so in 1949 it ruled that 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 its fate, AT&T began offering answering machines to its customers in 1951. Although Europe liked answering machines before the US, in the 1960s the US market for answering machines was probably larger. than Europe.

The 1970s saw the answering machine become increasingly cheaper due to the use of microelectronics. In the 1980s, answering machines flooded the market; most were made by, or made by, Asian companies and sold under American trade names. Since the 1980s, the number of American homes with answering machines has leveled off.

Today, the answering machine is used less to record calls and more used to screen calls. Telemarketers have gotten out of hand. They call people at all hours of the day, even on weekends, and go online, where seemingly private information is available for public viewing, no one knows who’s calling. The answering machine is used more as a security utility than for its original purpose; which I think was to record calls from people we really wanted to talk to.