Recent Reads

Doc Savage: Secret in the Sky, by Kenneth Robeson. Doc Savage: the bronze superman with the strangely flecked eyes, the super-scientific lab atop the tallest skyscraper in New York, the proto-James Bondian gadgets, and the crew of superlative sidekicks, against which no evildoer stands a chance!

This series is enough of a legend in the pulp world that when a reprint of a 1935 episode of Doc's adventures showed up in the library's stack of unwanted donations, I picked it up to explore his world.

Unfortunately, the book has all the worst characteristics that I've come to associate with old-time serial pulp fiction. Stiff, clunky dialogue and awkward prose, and a story that doesn't really grab my attention or make very much sense. (Especially once it lost my attention and I started skimming chapters.)

The most interesting part of the book is the first page, upon which one finds the following passage:

At exactly noon, the telephone buzzer whirred in Doc Savage's New York skyscraper headquarters. Noon, straight up, Eastern Standard Time.

The buzzer whirred three times, with lengthy pauses between whirs, which allowed time for anyone prsent to have answered. Then an automatic answering device, an ingenious arrangement of receiver, voice recorder, and phonographic speaker -- a creation of Doc Savage's scientific skill -- was cut in automatically. The phonograph record turned under the needle and sent words over the telephone wire.

"This is a mechanical robot speaking from Doc Savage's headquarters and advising you that Doc Savage is not present but that any message you care to leave will be recorded in your own voice and will come to Doc Savage's attention later," spoke the mechanical contrivance. "You may proceed with whatever you wish to say, if anything."

"Doc!" gasped a voice...

(...text omitted....)

...Then came silence, followed by a click as the receiver was placed on the hook at the San Francisco terminus of the wire.

The mechanical device in Doc Savage's New York office ran on for some moments, and a stamp clock automatically recorded the exact time of the message on a paper roll; then the apparatus stopped and set itself for another call, should one come.

So there you have it, a 1935 description of an analog telephone answering machine. It sounds quaint today, but was probably something of a novel idea when first published. Whether such a device was built in the 1930s, either commercially or experimentally, is unknown to me. The text fails to explain exactly how the message was recorded. Wax cylinders, perhaps? Acetate disks? Was magnetic recording tape available at that time?

No, it really doesn't make sense that the fabulously wealthy Doc Savage couldn't afford to retain a secretary. Nor does it make any sense that such a prominent enemy to evildoers everywhere would leave his headquarters unattended by a trusted human agent. But the description of an automatic answering machine supplied the 1935 reader with a concrete, understandable example of a technological advance which -- unlike rayguns and spaceships -- might conceivably be available in the near future and useful to an ordinary person. In doing so, might it have prompted some of those readers to take an interest in the electrical and engineering sciences, and thus indirectly contributed to the advancement of science in following years?