The Telegraphone, while not a commercial success, did demonstrate that a wire recorder could be used for certain applications such as office dictation and telephone recording (for a history of the answering machine, click here). Several European companies in the 1920s attempted to market improved wire recorders for dictating and telephone recording purposes. These were the first magnetic recorders to use the new technology of electronics. Using the vacuum-tube electronic amplifiers that became available after World War I, these recorders could capture weak telephone signals and reproduce them with greater volume than was possible with the Telegraphone. Examples of these European machines included the “Textophone” and the “Dailygraph.”