The Telephone: Hello, Is Anyone There?

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A telephone used to be a friend, something you said hello to and took for granted. But since the advent of direct dialing and seven-digit phone numbers plus area code, the square black box, which no longer is necessarily either square or black, has inspired admiration in some, irritation in others. Both the admiration and the irritation make little difference, because increasingly there is no real person to talk to anyway.

Useful Frills. Taped announcements already do everything from saying a prayer to giving out the movie schedule. And now the recordings are heading for homes. Newly elaborated devices will answer the owner's phone with a taped message from him and record callers' messages, then play them back to the missing owner even when he calls in from outside. Unlike answering services, which suffer from human manning, the machines never miss a call, never foul up a message, and are never rude.

The size of a Dictaphone, they can be rented from American Telephone & Telegraph and other phone companies for about $25 monthly or be purchased outright from Robosonics Inc., the largest-selling private manufacturer, and R.S.V.P., its West Coast rival, for about $400 and up, depending on the number of frills. Robosonics' latest is a $700 version which will take up to six hours of messages, aimed at firms like meat wholesalers, who can thus collect overnight orders. R.S.V.P. is bringing out a model which allows the owner to call in and change his own recorded message. Tentative price: $595.

Diverted Thief. The answering machines are only mildly Buck Rogerish compared with Marcom Inc.'s call diverter. A thumb wheel is set with the number where the owner will be, and incoming calls are transferred there. Lawyer Melvin Belli has one, switches early-morning calls to the hamburger stand where he breakfasts. And since the call is transferred without the caller's being any the wiser, the device should be a boon to wayward husbands or junior executives who have slipped out for a quick pick-me-up.

Marcom is busy finding more uses for its invention. Last May, a San Jose, Calif., burglar learned about one of them. When he slipped open the window of a house whose owner was away on vacation, he unknowingly tripped a trigger that set the diverter to silently dialing the police. When the cops answered the phone, the diverter sounded a coded buzz. By checking their key, the police could identify the source of the call, soon had a prowl car on the way.