Ad for first Telephone Answering Machine

This ad came from Mechanix Illustrated, which was a magazine that competed with Popular Mechanics. In fact, it originally started as Modern Mechanics, and then changed to Modern Mechanix in the early 1930’s. In 1938 it became Mechanix Illustrated, and remained that way until 1984. It changed titles twice more before shutting down in 2001.

Interesting how they describe the type of voice mail you can expect, and then… “Don’t be surprised if that’s what you hear one day!”