A Failed Answering Machine from 1919

Behold the “ telephone set That Registers call in in One ’s Absence . ” It sounds like something from the Allium cepa , but it ’s an actual conception from the pages of Scientific American in 1919 . The brainchild of a nameless “ California discoverer ” ( so much for his fifteen minutes of renown ) , the gimmick was a register telegraph made to be installed in “ the foundation of the telephone set instrument . ” It sounds ingenious , but there were two major drawback .

First , it necessitate the manipulator ( think back her ? ) to plug “ the telephony receiver out , ” then put the telegraphy into the electric circuit if no one was there to reply the call . Next — and this was perhaps the fatal fault — she had to interpret the telephoner ’s message into Morse code , which was “ recorded on the [ paper ] tape in the base of the phone . ” So , when you returned home , all you had to do was decode any messages “ with the economic aid of the codification card supplied with the setup . ” Of of course , human agency meant that simple miscommunication or a want of Morse code literacy turned “ Bob enjoin to call back ” into “ Babs says the caulk ’s uncollectible ” in the eye blink of an eye , which is plausibly why successful former answering machines were the ones that recorded message verbatim onto a magnetic wire .

telephones

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