Phonograph Answering Machine using Vinyl Discs

This Peatrophone phonograph answering machine from 1953 directly recorded telephone messages to a blank disc and could store 140 messages, each limited to 23 seconds of recording time... however the catch was that the recording was permanent. Yes, that would be permanent. Forever and ever. No recording over the old messages! A brand new disk was required every single time the old disc was full of messages. Haha! Anyhow it was the only answering machine available at the time and apparently it worked.

These pictures are from the Popular Science magazine of May 1953.

Well that was one use of vinyl recording that I didn't know about before! ;-)