The Alibiphon, built by Willy Müller in ca. 1957, was one of the first answering machines in Germany. The cabinet was made of plastic, the chassis was steel. The device used a single rim-driven magnetic disk for recording the outgoing message and a basic tube circuit (later models were transistorized). The object on top of the device is the microphone to record messages. The narrow window over the <i>Alibiphon</i> logo is the "time counter" showing position of the magnetic recording-playback head over the disk. The erase head was fixed and was large enough to demagnetize all tracks in one pass). A complete answering machine was made of this unit, an external reel-to-reel incoming message recorder, and a third unit to control this recorder.
Museum für Kommunikation, Frankfurt, Germany. Photo by Maximilian Schönherr with help from Lioba Nägele.
<a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Maximilian_Sch%C3%B6nherr" title="User:Maximilian Schönherr">Maximilian Schönherr</a>
CC BY-SA 3.0
<span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>