ANSWERING MACHINES

Answering Machines

Valdemar Poulsen, the Danish telephone engineer and inventor, patented the world’s first answering machine

which he called the telegraphone in 1898. It was an ingenious apparatus for recording telephone conversations.

It recorded, on a wire, the varying magnetic fields produced by a sound. The magnetized wire could then be used to play back the sound.

Willy Müller invented the first automatic answering machine in 1935. This answering machine was a threefoot-

tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath

􀂙 Cross writing instruments was founded in 1846 by Alonzo Townsend Cross.

􀂙 Cross DigitalWriter was an inkless ‘pen’ designed for writing on the screens of personal digital assistants

(PDAs), such as the PalmPilot. This was followed by CrossPad.

􀂙 Nissan is testing a new electric motor powered by lithium-ion batteries in a boxy small car that goes by the

name ‘The Cube’.

􀂙 Hewlett Packard owns the luxury PC brand Voodoo.

􀂙 Dell has a new slogan ‘Simplify IT’

􀂙 Dom Perignon Champagne has 55% Chardonnay and 45% Pinot Noir

􀂙 It was in Live and Let Die (1973) that James Bond shifted his loyalty from Dom Perignon to Bollinger.

􀂙 Originally created for Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1876, Cristal is the only champagne that comes in a clear glass bottle—apparently to cater to the whims of the tsar— wrapped in cellophane wrapper to

protect its contents from ultraviolet and fluorescent light.