The answering machine, answerphone or message machine, also known as the telephone answering machine (or TAM) in the UK and some Commonwealth countries, ansaphone, ansafone, or telephone answering device (TAD) is a device for answering telephones and recording callers' messages.
Unlike voicemail, which can be a centralized or networked system that performs a similar function, an answering machine must be installed in the customer's premises alongside — or incorporated within — the customer's telephone.
Famous quotes containing the words answering and/or machine:
“Goddesses never die. They slip in and out of the world’s cities, in and out of our dreams, century after century, answering to different names, dressed differently, perhaps even disguised, perhaps idle and unemployed, their official altars abandoned, their temples feared or simply forgotten.”
—Phyllis Chesler (b. 1941)
“The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is perfect, the engineer is nobody. Every new step in improving the engine restricts one more act of the engineer,—unteaches him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)