Answering machine pioneer dies

Danner founded Electronic Tele-Communications

By BRANDON LORENZ
Freeman Staff

WAUKESHA -- Dean Danner's own voice is on his home answering machine. "It looks like the answering machine beat us to the phone," the message begins.

That's just the way his father, George Danner, would want it. George Danner, 84, died Tuesday.

In 1949, at the age of 30, Danner partnered with Joseph Zimmermann to form a company that was the first to mass produce and sell and automatic telephone answering machine, his family said.

"They were the pioneers," said Dean Danner. "They did some of the initial hearings with the FCC in the 1950s."

Early on, the telephone companies were not anxious to allow anything to hook into the telephone network. So the first answering machines the company sold were mechanical. They worked by lifting the telephone off the receiver when it rang and recording a message.

Friends and family members alike remembered Danner as a hard worker. In 1979 he retired, only to found a new company called Electronic Tele-Communications with his family.

Retiring from day-to-day business in 1992, he remained chairman of the board until his death.

"He worked hard all his life," said Hazel Danner, his wife.

Waukesha Rotary President Steve Crandell agreed. Danner was a former Rotary president and helped start the Sunrise Rotary Club. Crandell said that declining health had kept Danner from attending all of the group's meetings recently.

"He felt bad about that. But he kept coming to all of the meetings on a regular basis," said Crandell. "He truly exhibited service above self, which is the Rotary's motto."

Danner like to play gold and sheepshead. He learned to play the card game from a group at church when he first moved to Winsconsin, Dean Danner said.

"They played for money and he learned very quickly," he said.

Today, family members are still involved with the company Danner founded. Based in Waukesha, Electronic Tele-Communications makes digital voice and call processing systems, such as the automatic systems that announce the time and weather over the telephone.

Dean Danner is the company's president. Danner's daughter-in-law Boni is the company's vice president. Other family members work in the company's human resources and information technology departments.

"We saw a niche market that there wasn't anybody satisfying," Dean Danner said.