Live answering services came about due to high demand from the United States telephone customers need for some form of message service. The very first of these services was made with circuitry built into a switchboard.This switchboard then forwarded calls to the designated lines. This was called Live answer and much used by physicians and smaller businesses. They can still be found in use today too.
The new found success of these led inventors to come up with even better ways of implementing these services to make it even easier. In the year of 1949, answering machines which were automatic were first introduced.These first machines gained permission to be used by the Federal Communications Committee and added to telephone lines. The answering machine post war era called an electronic Secretary was the first of many models.This Electronic Secretary model used a record of 45 RPM and wiring to record messages that were outgoing.
Models after this started using transport tapes in pairs. In the 1950’s the telephone company At&T debuted in a test market the Peatrophone.This machine was designed and produced by the manufacturing company Gray. The company of Ohio Bell was the first to test it. The Peatrophone worked using two disks for the phonograph and not the originally used magnetic style tapes.One of these smaller disks contained a message for outgoing and the bigger one captured calls coming in. The lid had storage space for more disks to keep on hand.
In the early 60’s GTE telephone harmonic reducer and Bell Companies started renting out these machines for profit to customers.Next came the New York made Robosonic Secretary. These were much more expensive than previous models due to their reliability and also their ruggedness. This model was only available until 1963.That year the Record-o-Phone came out by Robosonic and took its place in the markets. The Record-o-Phone used something called a Telekey type of whistle to access the machine remotely. Later on a signal generator that was electronic replaced the Telekey.This signal generator worked as the customer held the piece up to their own phone receivers.
More models which were around in the 60’s included the Telecord RCME, Code-A-Phone and the European version called The Telefunken Model.In the 1980’s machines for answering calls really took off as phone customers could now purchase their own equipment instead of being regulated to rent them from a specific telephone company. Businesses and homes alike went out to buy their own personal answering machines.The 1990’s showed the introduction of more convenient voice mail options but the machines were still very high in demand. Then the emergence of the first cell phones happened and that’s when these services as we know them took a big change for the better.Today answering services mainly work from call centers all around the world. These services answer phone calls for all types of professionals and businesses whose work keeps them very busy and unable to answer all calls coming in.
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