Before voicemail, an answering machine had to make a desk telephone answer itself. A caller heard a recorded greeting; inside the room, a mechanism lifted the handset, played the greeting, recorded the caller on wire or tape, then put the handset back. The awkward choreography changed across different machines, but these museum records show how early inventors and manufacturers tackled it.
Before answering machines: recording a voice on wire
The idea of magnetic sound recording predates practical telephone answering machines by decades. In 1878, American inventor Oberlin Smith experimented with recording on steel wire and other materials. He did not complete a machine, but described the concept publicly in an 1888 article in Electrical World.
In 1898, Valdemar Poulsen demonstrated a working magnetic recorder he called the Telegraphone. At the Copenhagen Telegraph Company, he used a telephone microphone to send a signal to an electromagnet that recorded sound on steel piano wire. He filed a patent in 1899. At the 1900 Paris World Exhibition, the Telegraphone received a Grand Prix and recorded Emperor Franz Josef. The Computer History Museum describes two formats: a steel-wire cylinder that could hold up to 30 minutes and a simple disk that held two minutes. These were recording devices, not the familiar home machines that automatically handled a call.
The Textophone put the phone and recorder in two places
Introduced in 1933, the Textophone paired a telephone desk set with a separate recording and playback console. Engineer Semi Begun helped design it while working for Lorenz. Steel wire ran between reels past an electromagnet, allowing sound to be recorded and played back. The Textophone could also be used for dictation, a function that helped it sell.
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Its two-piece arrangement is a reminder that early answering devices were not necessarily a single box attached to a phone. The telephone and recording apparatus could be separate parts of one system.
When did answering machines come out in the United States?
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History dates Ansafone’s first U.S. sales to 1960. It says commercial answering machines did not begin entering the U.S. market until the 1960s. The museum also describes AT&T as trying to block their introduction, concerned that callers might make fewer calls if they could leave recorded messages.
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Ansafone: separate loops for greeting and messages
The Ansafone described by the Smithsonian sat beneath an ordinary desk telephone. When a call came in, arms lifted the handset; the machine played its outgoing greeting, recorded the caller’s message on a separate tape loop, then replaced the handset. Another loop held the greeting. The process depended on the machine physically taking control of the phone rather than simply forwarding a call to a network service.
Robosonics Record-O-Phone: a cradle arm and plastic tape
The Smithsonian’s Robosonics Model 100 Record-O-Phone appeared in 1963. Designed for business customers, it used a reel of plastic recording tape and a cradle-arm mechanism to lift a desk telephone’s handset. Because it operated by lifting the handset rather than electrically connecting to the phone, it could handle the call mechanically. The museum describes its price as several hundred dollars; it does not give a precise price or a price year.
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How the machines differed
| Example | Recording medium | Physical layout | How it handled the telephone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Textophone (1933) | Steel wire | Separate telephone desk set and recording/playback console | The Smithsonian collection description does not state a handset-lifting mechanism. |
| Ansafone (first U.S. sales in 1960, per the Smithsonian) | Tape loops: one for the greeting, another for incoming messages | Machine beneath an ordinary desk phone | Arms lifted and replaced the handset. |
| Robosonics Model 100 Record-O-Phone (1963) | Plastic recording tape on a reel | Device used with a desk telephone | A cradle arm lifted the handset; the museum says it did not electrically connect to the telephone. |
These examples show different solutions, not a universal sequence that every manufacturer followed. The surviving collection descriptions establish particular designs, not the full range of products or how quickly households adopted them.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What people used before voicemail—and what the record establishes
These machines captured the caller’s voice on a local physical medium, such as wire or tape, after answering the connected telephone. The records described here establish that early commercial machines reached U.S. customers in the 1960s; they do not establish when answering machines became common in homes, how adoption varied by country, or when network voicemail displaced or coexisted with them. It would be misleading to treat voicemail as the moment answering machines simply disappeared.
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