Jewish Invention Myths: The Answering Machine and the Voicemail System

Another day, another ‘Jewish Invention’ myth… this time lets cover the claim that jews invented the answering machine and/or the voicemail which many readers who are 30 or older will likely remember well.

Rabbi Stephen Wise writing for ‘Reform Judaism’ claims that:

‘Leave a Message: In 1986, Comverse developed the world's first voicemail system combining voice, fax, and calling functions into a single system. Today Comverse leads the world's messaging market.’ (1)

Now this simply isn’t true in any way, shape or form because the basis for the answering phone is magnetic recording which was invented by Danish engineer Valdemar Poulson in 1898. (2)

A true answering phone was first created by American inventor William Schergens in 1931 and promoted in the July 1931 issue of the popular mechanical engineering publication ‘Popular Mechanics’ (3) although it had already been invented by American engineer Clarence Hickman in Bell Labs in 1930. (4)

As Tim Wu writes regarding this:

‘In early 1934, Clarence Hickman, a Bell Labs engineer, had a secret machine, about six feet tall, standing in his office. It was a device without equal in the world, decades ahead of its time. If you call and there was no answer on the phone line to which Hickman’s invention was connected, the machine would beep and a recording device would come on allowing the call to leave a message.’ (5)

So, while Hickman had invented the answering machine by 1930; he had a functional unit that could have been easily commercialized by early 1934 before Bell Labs knocked the idea on head. (6)

Now perhaps surprisingly Rabbi Wise doesn’t mention Ludwig Blattner, who was a jewish inventor in Germany who promoted the idea of an answering machine as early as 1929, (7) but we have no evidence the idea ever went beyond the stage of being an idea into a working prototype. (8)

This the invention of answering phone cannot be attributed to Blattner.

Thus, we can see that jews didn’t invent the answer phone: non-jewish American engineers did based upon technology invented by the Danish.

But what about the ‘first voicemail system’ that Rabbi Wise claims that Comverse first created in Israel in 1986?

This is also incorrect as the first voicemail system was created by American inventor and businessman Gordon Matthews in 1979 and was called ‘Voice Message Exchange’ and which was awarded US patent number 4,371,752 in 1983. (9)

Not by Comverse in 1986!

So no both the answering machine and the voicemail system are the creation of non-jewish Americans not jews and/or Israelis!

References

(1) https://reformjudaism.org/israeli-inventions-work

(2) https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20040302130000/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/13071/20040303-0000/www.acmi.net.au/AIC/POULSEN_BIO.html

(3) Anon., ‘Robot That Answers Phone Takes Messages’, Popular Mechanics, July 1931, p. 96

(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20160729061047/http://www.indianahistory.org/our-collections/collection-guides/clarence-hickman-and-charles-stoddard-papers-1886.pdf

(5) Tim Wu, 2010, ‘The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires’, 1st Edition, Alfred A. Knopf: New York, p. 104

(6) Ibid., pp. 104-106

(7) https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/news/1929answering-machine-in-our-pages100-75-and-50-years-ago.html

(8) https://issuu.com/gadgetsmagazine/docs/2018_08_aug/s/10473578

(9) https://patents.google.com/patent/US4371752A/en