The Danish Valdemar Poulsen (1869-1942) had a decisive influence on the modern world when he invented the magnetic recording of sounds in 1898 – an extremely useful innovation that was used in tape recorders, hard drives, floppy disks and credit cards. Before that, however, he created the world’s first “telephone answering machine” in 1904. The smooth functioning of contemporary society depends on communication tools. Nowadays, it is very rare to find a telephone that does not have a device for answering calls or voice mail. The invention of the telephone in 1876 changed the world: from then on, people could talk to each other at any time, from any place. The invention of the answering machine was only a matter of time. The first answering machines were equipped with Poulsen’s magnetic recorder. Later versions recorded messages on magnetic tapes. Most modern devices use memory: the first digital answering machine was invented in the United States by Kazuo Hashimoto in 1983. The answering machine – like its modern counterparts, voice mail, call logs and text messages – minimizes this inconvenience by allowing the user to know who is calling and decide whether or not to answer.