whats the purpose of an answering service
doesit replace a machine? it sounds romantic and exotic like woodys other notions
Back in the days before there were answering machines, cell phones or pagers, answering services were something like a virtual secretary. You got a phone number that rang at a switchboard who would answer your call. Depending on the service, they took a message, gave the caller a number to reach you at directly, maybe even connected you to them if you didn't want to give out the number.
It was like a 24 hour secretary for professional people without a 24 hour office.
im sure they had answering machines in the 70s its simple technology. but i guess its more personakl
shareBack then you couldn't call an answering machine. Answering machines used cassette tapes and you had to be at your phone to hear the message. Answering service you can call from anywhere. Now answering machines use voicemail technology.
George Carlin: It's all bullsh-t and it's bad for ya.
ic
share(1) Answering services still exist, though they constitute much more of a niche industry than they once did. My impression is that nowadays they're mostly used by (a) people who like the idea of callers being greeted with a human presence rather than a technological system, and (b) people who want to fool callers, at least some of the time, into thinking that they actually have an office.
(2) Contrary to what mobocracy seems to be saying, callers don't use a special phone number to reach your answering service. Rather, you have your calls forwarded from your own phone number to the answering service when you're going out or you don't want to be disturbed, and then later on you have them unforwarded. The callers never call any number but yours.
(3) There's a huge overlap between the earlier (and still not ended) era of answering services on the one hand, and the era of answering machines and voicemail on the other. Answering machines were first invented, and were marketed on a very limited basis, in the 1930's; marketed more extensively in the United States, though unsuccessfully, starting in 1949; and first marketed successfully in the United States starting in 1960. As best I can determine based on some brief, superficial Internet research, cassette-based answering machines appeared in the sixties or early seventies, and digital answering machines appeared in the eighties or early nineties.
(4) It's absolutely not true that cassette-based answering machines can't be remotely monitorable: in fact, every cassette-based machine that I've ever been familiar with--and this would be going back to the late eighties--has been remotely monitorable. I wish posters would check the facts on questions like this one rather than just fantasizing.
Does owning answering machines count as "checking facts" with you, oh lord? That's really wonderful that you had answering machines that were "remotely monitorable". I, unfortunately, did not have such answering machines. I had the kind you would play back when you got home. That's the kind that everyone that I knew had. I never heard one person say "I'm gonna call my answering machine" in those days. Everyone said "I'll check my messages when I get home". That is until the voicemail answering machines came out. Maybe I didn't run in the same circles as you did much to my regret. If they were so common back then, wouldn't that eliminate the need for paying for an answering service?
George Carlin: It's all bullsh-t and it's bad for ya.
MrBlondNYC: My apologies for accusing you of "fantasizing": I thought you were probably some teenager or twentysomething who'd never actually used cassette-based answering machines, and was just supposing what their characteristics might be. (I'm thinking of the usual kind of supposition along the lines of "everything digital is good, and everything analog is primitive and bad in every imaginable way".)
In the case of our little dispute here, my having owned and used cassette-based answering machines does count as checking facts. You said that such machines can never be remotely monitored, and so all I needed was one counterexample to disprove your assertion. Actually, I can remember around half a dozen cassette-based answering machines, my own and others', that could serve as counterexamples. Usually each individual machine was assigned one particular touch-tone number that initiated its remote monitoring process; I think that number was usually found on a sticker affixed to the underside of the cassette-well door. Possibly other touch-tone numbers would be used to activate further steps in the monitoring process; it's hard for me to remember now. And yes, I can remember people often saying "I'm gonna call my answering machine". I wonder, is it possible that some of the cassette-based answering machines you and your friends and family owned were remotely monitorable, and you just didn't realize it?
Regarding your question as to whether remotely monitorable cassette-based answering machines would eliminate the need for paying for an answering service, the answer is that to a large extent, yes they would. That's one of the reasons that answering services had already become uncommon twenty-five, even thirty years ago. I worked briefly back in 1989 for a charitable organization whose head used an answering service, and I remember regarding that as quite peculiar.
I don't recall using the word "never". I was speaking generally. It's like saying "people didn't have mobile phones back then". Well, of course, SOME people who could afford them did. But generally, speaking people did not. There's always that kid in the class who has to go "But but but actually...". Give us a break.
If every answering machine was remotely monitorable as you state, then the reason why answering services still did exist in 1979 is because most people did not know that or you are incorrect that they all did. Otherwise, they would not have still existed. This movie is about well-to-do intelligent people and they're using an answering service, aren't they? I remember people using answering services till at least the early 90s. So maybe we just weren't as smart as you.
George Carlin: It's all bullsh-t and it's bad for ya.
MrBlondNYC: The wording of your August 4th post was: "Back then you couldn't call an answering machine. Answering machines used cassette tapes and you had to be at your phone to hear the message. Answering service you can call from anywhere. Now answering machines use voicemail technology." You can try to backpedal all you want, but clearly what you were trying to say was that it's because answering machines used cassette tapes that you couldn't call them--that there was something about cassette tapes that made remote monitoring technologically impossible--and that only with "voicemail technology" did it become possible to monitor messages remotely. You weren't speaking "generally", you were speaking absolutely, which is always a risky thing to do.
I didn't claim that "every answering machine was remotely monitorable", I only said that a lot of them were; and I wasn't even talking about the time period when Manhattan was made (1978-79), but rather about the eighties and nineties: I don't know whether or not the remote-monitoring feature had been introduced to any answering machines as early as the seventies. My only intention was to refute your claim that the use of cassettes makes remote monitoring impossible.
By the way, here's an interesting couple of sentences from an 1990 document I found on the Internet about how to hack into other people's answering machines, with at least some of the answering machines discussed being clearly identified as cassette-based: "[. . .] most answering machines built now have remote access features which allow the owner, or anyone to call in and press a security code to play their messages [. . .] Some older models don't have remote access so you cannot do anything to them." (http://textfiles.com/hacking/amhack.txt.) How old were the "older models" mentioned? I don't know.
And I have to disagree with your new claim that if remotely monitorable answering machines had existed in the late seventies and everybody had known about them (as if it were ever possible for a given fact to be known by absolutely everybody), then answering services "would not have still existed". People stick with old systems and old technologies for all kinds of reasons, not just because of ignorance. They may not want to take the time or trouble, or incur the upfront costs, to switch to a new technology; they may find the old system or technology to be comfortingly familiar, or to have certain good features that the new technology lacks; and so on. As I said, I don't know whether any remotely monitorable answering machines existed in the late seventies; but even if they did exist and everybody, or most people, or most well-to-do intelligent people, knew about it, that wouldn't mean that the answering service industry should have been dead by then. And as I pointed out in one of my earlier posts, even today, in the voicemail era, the answering service industry still exists.
"I only said that a lot of them were; and I wasn't even talking about the time period when Manhattan was made (1978-79),"
We WERE talking about the time period that this film was made because this the board about that film. Because that's what the OP was asking about. What the hell do you think "back then" means? The time when this movie was made! We weren't talking about the entire history of answering machines. You, for some strange reason, took it in that direction.
You were talking about the ones you were familiar with. I was talking about the ones that I was familiar with. You refuted it, fine. You are the one who decided to a) talk about the history of answering machines and 2) attack me because I didn't know about said history. Goodbye.
George Carlin: It's all bullsh-t and it's bad for ya.
I appreciate your thorough and well researched response gds
shareCan't remember when I first encountered answering machines, but I do remember not realizing I was speaking to a recording and getting mad when the "person" didn't respond to me!
BTW, in the 1955 film KISS ME DEADLY, the private eye Mike Hammer has a reel-to-reel answering machine on his wall.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"
Not that much in the 70's. I recall answering machines becoming commonplace in the 80's
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