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An answering machine is a telephone answering device also known as an answer phone, ansaphone or ansafone. The modern digital answering machines are now standalone devices.

The telegraphone was invented in 1898 by Valdemar Poulsen, a Danish telephone engineer. It is said to be the precursor of the contemporary answering machine. This device used a magnetic sound recording technique to record telephone conversations and to playback the sound. In 1935, the first automatic answering machine was invented, and its height was as much as three feet. This device would be attached to the telephone to record messages from the caller. By attaching a clock to the device allowed one to keep note of the time of calls received.

However, Ansafone, the first answering machine was invented by Dr Kazuo Hashimoto for the Phonetel Company, which sold the device in the USA. This was followed by Casio which gave the world its first commercially viable answering machine known as the Telephone Answering Device (TAD). Dr Hashimoto also introduced the first digital TAD in 1983, and it was christened as the Automatic Digital Telephone Answering Device.

The answer phone uses two cassettes - one is an outgoing cassette that plays a pre-recorded message after a certain number of rings, and the incoming one records the message from the caller unless the connection is off. Some earlier answer phones offered a remote listening facility that allowed the owner to access the messages from a remote telephone away from home. All these answering devices needed a battery backup in case of a power failure.

The modern answering machines are digital devices which store codes, pre-recorded dates, time stamps and messages onto a single RAM chip. They are mostly stand alone devices and need not be connected to a telephone. They can store from 12 to 192 minutes of recorded messages. The messages can be remotely accessed from another phone using easy to follow instructions.

Some of these devices have a toll saver feature that saves on phone call charges. These answering devices can be programmed to take a call after a set number of rings. Some of the most recent digital answering devices also include features such as volume control, audible message alert, variable speed playback option and flash memory to store incoming calls. They also feature a message guard to avoid losing messages in case of power failure, an LED message counter, pre-recorded greetings and a caller ID option.