TellZall's object for March is the Telephone Answering Service.

Telephones proliferated quickly after their introduction in 1877. By 1878 some 10,000 instruments were in use, including one at the White House that was installed under the direction of President Rutherford B. Hayes. Two years later, the number of "phones" had grown tenfold.

As business and professional people grew to rely upon telephones, a problem became evident: what would happen to information when no one was present to answer the call? With letters and telegrams, the message was waiting when the recipient returned, but unanswered telephone calls were simply information gone forever.

The solution to the problem was the telephone answering service. When a person left the office, he or she would have the telephone "forwarded" to a remote telephone answering service where one or more employees would answer calls and write down messages. The business person would check with the answering service periodically to retrieve messages. In some instances, the service might be able to contact the person in case of emergency. This was especially the case with doctors.

The woman shown here is working at the switchboard of an telephone answering service. She recalled that "our job was to take calls from patients, hospitals, and associates and relay them to the doctor in a timely manner." She also took calls from other businesses and even placed "wake-up" calls to clients who had trouble sleeping through alarm clocks.

Telephone answering devices (TADs) gradually replaced most telephone answering services. As early as 1898 an inventor had developed a machine to automatically answer the telephone and record a message from the caller. But the machines were not practical. In 1960 the Ansafone, invented by Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto, became the first practical TAD. In 1972 the PhoneMate, which could hold twenty messages on tape, began the widespread use of TADs. In the mid-1980s, digital technology allowed improvements that reduced weight and cost and increased capabilities and reliability. The advent of voice mail furthered the ability of consumers to have their telephones monitored electronically. Telephone answering services continue to offer important assistance to many business professionals, especially those in the field of medicine. However, most businesses and individuals now rely on telephone answering devices to deal with the problem of missed phone calls.

Additional Reading:
http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory/History1.htm
http://www.inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blansweringmachines.htm