Answering Machine

Willy Muller invented the first device in 1935, which can answer the telephone and take a message by itself. Unfortunately his answerphone was around 3 feet tall and took up too much space.

Panasonic answering machine By Norbert Schnitzler 

Japanese inventor Kazuo Hashimoto patented his first telephone answering machine, the Ansa Fone, in Japan in 1954, when he was employed by a company called Phonetel. The company began selling the first answering machines in the USA in 1960.

A pioneering answerphone in Britain in the early 1970s was the Ipsophone, which was manufactured in Switzerland. It weighed 125kg and it took up to three days to install. 

Answering machines became more widely used after the restructuring of AT&T in 1984, which was when the machines became affordable. At that point, answering machines began to sell more than 1,000,000 units per year, and their technology became standardized. 

In the 1990s, telephone companies began offering "voice mail" services (which had been available since at least the 1970s at the offices of IBM and some other companies). However, the sales of home answering machines remained high. 

At first, answering machines used magnetic tape (a smaller version of audio cassettes). Today, most systems use computer memory to store the messages and the prerecorded text.

The advent of the cell phone, which virtually demands some kind of voice mail system, has reduced the demand for the answering machine.

Don LaFontaine was an American voice actor who recorded more than 5,000 movie trailers and hundreds of thousands of television advertisements, and video game trailers. He once offered to record an answering machine message for anyone that contacted him, if he had the time. He received so many requests, he had to stop offering them.

Prince William and Prince Harry once pulled a prank on their grandmother Queen Elizabeth II, by changing her voicemail answering message to say, "Hey wassup! This is Liz. Sorry I'm away from the throne. For a hotline to Philip, press one. For Charles, press two. And for the corgis, press three."

Since Jason Alexander (George Costanza) is a trained Broadway singer, he had to re-record the famous George answering machine song in Seinfeld because he sung it too well; Larry David wanted him to purposely sing terrible to make it sound believable.

An Association poll revealed that one third of dog owners talk to their dogs on the phone or leave messages on an answering machine while away.