<P> As land lines become less important, due to the shift to cell phone technology, and as unified communications matures, the installed base of TADs is shrinking . </P> <P> Most 20th century answering machines used magnetic recording which Valdemar Poulsen invented in 1898 . The creation of the first practical automatic answering device for telephones, however, is in dispute . Clarence Hickman worked for Bell Laboratories from 1930 where he developed methods for the magnetic recording and working on the recognition of speech patterns and electromechanical switching systems . In 1934, he developed a tape - based answering machine which phone company AT&T, as the owner of Bell Laboratories, kept under wraps for years for fear that an answering machine would result in fewer telephone calls . Many claim it was William Muller in 1935, but it could have been created already in 1931 by William Schergens whose device used phonographic cylinders . Ludwig Blattner promoted a telephone answering machine in 1929 based on his Blattnerphone magnetic recording technology . In 1935 inventor Benjamin Thornton developed a machine to record voice messages from the caller . The device reportedly also was able to keep track of the time the recordings were made . Although many sources maintain that he invented it in 1935, Thornton had actually filed a patent in 1930 (Number 1831331) for this machine, which utilized a phonographic record as the recording medium . </P> <P> A commercial answering machine, the Tel - Magnet, offered in the United States in 1949, played outgoing messages and recorded incoming messages on a magnetic wire . It was priced at $200 but was not a commercial success . </P> <P> In 1949 the first commercially successful answering machine was the Electronic Secretary created by inventor Joseph Zimmerman and businessman George W. Danner, who founded Electronic Secretary Industries in Wisconsin . The Electronic Secretary used the then state - of - the - art technology of a 45 rpm record player for announcements and a wire recorder for message capture and playback . Electronic Secretary Industries was purchased in 1957 by General Telephone and Electronics . Another commercially successful answering machine was the Ansafone created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto, who was employed by a company called Phonetel . This company began selling the first answering machines in the US in 1960 . </P>

When did the first answering machine come out