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I purchased a telephone-answering machine with a prerecorded message that used a male voice. When Mother returned from vacation, I forgot to mention it to her.
The next Saturday, the phone rang and the machine answered. After the message, there was a pause and the caller hung up. A second time and the same result. Then the phone rang a third time. I heard, "This is your mother, I think. If I am, please call me."
Answering Machine
The bathtub was invented in 1850 and the telephone in 1875. In other words, if you had been living in 1850, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25 years without having to answer the phone.
~Bill DeWitt, 1972
In the early 1880's some well-to-do telephone owners started the unusual trend of paying to have a theatre employee hold a telephone receiver backstage, transmitting live plays and operas into their living rooms.
