Things were moving along more rapidly in Europe. A Swiss company in 1936 introduced a commercially successful answering machine called the Ipsophon, which recorded sound magnetically on steel tape. Ipsophons were intended to be used by large offices or in the central offices of the telephone companies themselves. This was not a machine for the individual or the home–it was much too expensive. But the function was similar. When users wanted to access their messages, they dialed in to the machine or central office and retrieved their calls using a crude form of voice recognition (based on the user whistling or speaking a combination of tones). The Ipsophon survived World War II and was marketed in the U.S. in 1946, but never saw much use there.