I imagine a lot of people have quietly wondered "how and when did 'answering machine' turn into 'voice mail'?"
the answer is that "answering machines" are a device which provides "message taking" service, but "voice mail" was a corporate internal communication concept invented in the 80s, which also takes messages, but does much more
companies selling voicemail systems for integration with business phone systems thought people would use voicemail like they now use email - leaving messages for people without actually calling them, by just dropping a message directly in their mailbox; fanning out announcements to the entire company with voicemail distribution lists; that sort of thing
this functionality actually got delivered. if you have voicemail at work, you can probably do all this stuff. nobody does, however, and that's because it's
deep breath
REALLY STUPID
Edit: I've decided I am seeing it too retrospectively. It wasn't stupid in the mid 80s when "ghosting" hadn't become socially acceptable and people would interrogate you like a prisoner if you didn't answer your phone when they knew you should be home
When I first set up voicemail on my phone, I navigated through all of its menus, and I was absolutely stunned to find it has this feature. You can, on any modern voicemail system provided by the major US carriers, send a voicemail to someone else's voicemail inbox without actually calling them. I've never done it myself, because, y'know, why, but it's a functionality that does indeed still exist, at least in the dial-in version of voicemail. I'm not aware of any Visual Voicemail implementation that bothered to carry over this functionality, because, y'know, WHY.
Just figured out how to send voicemails directly to peoples’ phones thanks to this post so I’m going to bother everyone I know with this feature constantly now thank you so much I can’t say it enough this will bring me great joy
