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Invention

Answering Machine

Electrical Engineering

An answering machine, also called an answerphone or message machine, is a device used to answer telephone calls and record the messages left by callers. When a call rings a set number of times chosen by the recipient, the machine activates and plays a generic or personally recorded greeting before recording the caller's message. Unlike voicemail, an answering machine sits at the user's own premises alongside or built into the landline telephone, and unlike an operator service, the caller never speaks to a person; as landlines have given way to mobile phones, the number of answering machines in use has been shrinking. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Disputed
Year
1930 2
The invention of the answering machine is genuinely disputed among several claimants: Valdemar Poulsen's magnetic recording principle from 1898, Clarence Hickman's 1934 Bell Laboratories device that AT&T kept confidential, Benjamin Thornton's patent filed 7 April 1930 (US 1,831,331, verified on Google Patents), and competing 1935 and 1931 claims for William Muller and William Schergens. 1930 is recorded here as the year of the earliest verifiable patent filing among these competing claims.
Patent or First-Use Date
1930-04-07 1
Significance
The answering machine let a telephone line record a caller's message automatically when the line went unanswered. It moved from early experimental magnetic-recording prototypes through Kazuo Hashimoto's commercially successful Ansafone and 1983 digital patent, US 4,616,110, to become a standard household and office telephone accessory before voicemail replaced the standalone device. 2
Connections

Preceded By

Telephone, Inventions

An answering machine is placed alongside or incorporated within a landline telephone to answer calls and record messages when the line goes unanswered.

Source Answering Machine (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Apparatus for Automatically Recording Telephonic Messages Patent US1831331 (Google Patents)
Google Patents / United States Patent OfficeBibliographic panel
Quote, Bibliographic panel
Filing date 1930-04-07; Publication date 1931-11-10.
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2. Answering Machine (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • History section
    Thornton had actually filed a patent in 1930 (Number 1831331) for this machine, which utilized a phonographic record.
  • Lead section
    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.
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Answering machine (Wikipedia)
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