I was on my couch watching TV when that thought came across my mind, and no one ever explained it to me
In: Technology
Before modern tech like cellphones, texts, emails, and DMs, you only had landline phone calls, faxes, and physical mail. If you called someone, there wasn’t voicemail for the call to be transferred to. The phone was in a house or office and couldn’t be moved. If nobody answered, then there was no way of leaving a message for later nor a way for someone to know that a call was made let alone missed. Answering machines were created to automatically answer a call after a defined number of rings with a pre-recorded message in the event you couldn’t answer the phone, then it would record the message left onto a physical cassette tape. Phone companies later started offering “features” like caller ID and voicemail for additional fees to let you know who was calling and to do the function of an answering machine for you. These features are assumed to be included with phone service nowadays, but years ago they weren’t even an option. Without knowing who was calling, many families would always answer the phone more formally using a greeting like “Hello, <family> residence. <name> speaking”. Different tech; different usages.
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