Retro Gadgets: Record-O-Phone
Someone scanned in this postcard from 1965:
It reads:
Manufacturer of the world’s finest personal telephone answering systems, designed to fit any of your personal or business needs.
Manufactured by Robosonics Incorporated.
The postcard was mailed to Tel-Tek Electronics at 2801 NW EXPY in Oklahoma City. The copyright date on the postcard is 1965. If you notice the touch tone phone doesn’t have pound (#) or asterisk (*) buttons, so it must have been one of the first touch tone phones.
When we were first married, Michael and I owned a Panasonic answering machine that used full sized cassette tapes for the outgoing and incoming messages. We could listen to our messages by calling our home number and punching in the secret code followed by the “splat” button (*).
It took us YEARS of not having a telephone land line to get out of the habit of checking messages. We would be at a hotel room in Vegas and I can remember Mike saying, “I just can’t get used to not having to check messages.” Sometimes our parents don’t even realize that we are out of town because they call us on our cell phones, we talk, answer questions and make plans for our next familial visit without mentioning that we don’t happen to be in Salt Lake City right now.
It’s amazing to me how much technology can change our lives. I went from having no answering machine in my childhood home to being a slave to one as a young adult to carrying my phone around with me wherever I go and with each change, I had to adapt to it.
In 1965, the answering machine was a new gadget that was rarely used and took up more space than the Los Angeles phone book on a table. Now, every single one of us have voice mail on our cell phones in our pockets. Hurray for progress!
In (about) 1966 I was a repair / installation tech. for The Burwin Company in Houston Tx.. We were the salea / service office for the Record-o-Phone answering machines.
It was a well designed and built unit that was for sale to the general public when Bell Telephone had a po;icy of NOT allowing customer owned equipment to be connected directly to “their” lones without the use of a telephone company provided (leased) interface device!
This was about the time the famous “Carter Phone” decission was being brought against the phone companeys. The suit eventually was won which allowed the direct connection of devices we have today,.
The Record-o-Phone did NOT use casset tapes and required a service call whenever the tapes wore out or broke.
The Model 100 (In your picture) was able to Remotely playback messages using a 2 tone sequencal (sp) remote that was about 1″ X 2″ X 5″.
My, how far we have come!
Michael Moore Houston Texas.
Comment by Michael Moore — June 23, 2009 @ 11:25 am
I have the same picture {8 1/2 x 11) hanging in my office. I was a tech for Tapetel Electronics in NJ and installed thousands of these units in the early 70’s. The factory that produced them was in North Bergen NJ at the time. I still have a working unit as pictured that is used every day as an after hours announcer. This unit is over 35 years old!! They were very well built and completely over engineered for their time.
Comment by Larry — September 22, 2010 @ 6:26 pm