far from state of the art

I suppose that it was only shortly after we returned from a visit to North America with this phone answering system that the phone companies started offering answering services as an integral part of having a phone, and stand-alone machines of this sort started to be phased out. I'm pretty sure that we inherited this particular machine (I think from Tzippi's brother) because it was already no longer needed in North America. We were pleased to have it since we felt that we were probably missing important messages when we weren't at home (doesn't everybody fear that the phone call telling us that we've just won the lottery but have to claim our prize within two hours arrives after we leave the house?). But it didn't take long until Israel caught up with North America, and we didn't need the machine either. Like so many other items, it ended up in the attic.