A closer look
In 1934, Bell Labs engineer Clarence Hickman built a genius magnetic recording device that automatically answered missed calls. Instead of rejoicing, his corporate overlords at AT&T completely freaked out and locked the prototype in a vault. Management was deeply paranoid that if the public discovered their calls could be recorded, everyone would abandon the telephone out of sheer privacy panic, destroying AT&T's entire business model. They successfully suppressed the answering machine for decades, forcing humanity to suffer the anxiety of missed calls until the tech leaked into the mainstream market in the 1950s.
