Dial-A-Joke
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[edit] The Original Dial-A-Joke by Mark Robbins, Ira Goldstein, Ben Weinberg and Jan Lucas
881-2345 Telephone Entertainment Line was created in 1971.
The Dial-A-Joke answering machine was located in the apartment of Mark Robbins and Ira Goldstein on Yarmouth Street in Encino, California. Jan Lucas was the voice of Dial-A-Joke. Mark Robbins built and maintained the Dial-A-Joke answering machine. Ira Goldstein and Ben Weinberg were responsible for content and production of the Dial-A-Joke tapes.
The four got a rubber stamp made that said “Dial-A-Joke 881-2345” and stamped hundreds of business card sized pieces of paper and then passed them out in local malls.
Originally, they used a Codeaphone answering machine, but due to high call volume the machine failed. Mark Robbins designed a new machine centered around a Craig 8-track tape player. About 30 different jokes were recorded on a Möbius loop tape (8 track tape). There were two tracks recorded on the tape. The first track had the joke on it. The second track had a beep tone after each joke which turned off the machine. They also had a counter that tracked the total number of jokes given. When they retired the machine, it had over a million calls logged.
[edit] Dial-A-Joke run by Mount Hood Chemicals
Located in Portland, Oregon: The makers of C-20 type laundry soap. Running through the late 70's. A new recording every weekday.
[edit] Dial-A-Joke developed by New York Telephone
936-3838
In 1974, Y&R Advertising on behalf of the New York Telephone Company booked a recording session in New York City's GT Harris Recording Studios on 55th Street and Broadway with stand-up comedian, Henny Youngman. The project was initiated by NY Telephone VP Executive Glenn Appleyard to become New York City's ambitious Dial-A-Joke variant. The original recordings, which later included such notables as Jay Leno and David Letterman, were donated to the Smithsonian Institute in the late 1980s.
New York Telephone Company's Voice Automatic Answering System was built by a Georgia company called Audichron. It was first put into service to provide automatic updating of Time and Weather for the New York Metropolitan Area and later adapted for this entertainment function. The system allowed for continous playback of a complete one minute message. It was called a "barge-in" system in that an incoming caller could connect to the playing message at any point, hear it to the conclusion, and then the message would play one more time until it was played from beginning to end. The unique part of the system is that it was engineered to allow for thousands of simultaneous connections.
[edit] Dial-A-Joke run by Steve Wozniak
255-6666 or 575-1625
[edit] Dial-A-Joke run by James Wayman
Located in DesMoines Iowa, then Crescent City California 976-JOKE, then 487-JOKE
