the.com/answering machine
The first device built to politely tell people you're ignoring them.
means A device that automatically picks up an unanswered phone call and records the caller's spoken message for the recipient to hear later.
from A plain compound of "answering" (from Old English "andswaru," a sworn response or reply) and "machine" (via French from Latin "machina," a device or contrivance). The thing itself emerged in the mid-20th century as telephone-recording technology became practical, and the term simply describes what it does: a machine that answers. The earlier patents and prototypes go back decades before the gadget became a household fixture, but the name never got fancier than its function.
- first model
- Sweden's 1935 Ipsophon weighed as much as a child
- cassette era
- Tiny tapes captured both breakups and lottery wins
- famous tape
- Nirvana wrote a song from a phone message
- the beep
- That cue trained millions to suddenly forget words
phone-mate 200 — best-selling answering machine of the 1980s, over 1 million units sold
panasonic kx-t1433 — iconic boxy silver answering machine widely used in offices and homes from 1990s-2000s