The 1947 anti-trust lawsuit was settled by the 1956 consent decree which forced AT&T to exit all businesses not related to providing a national telecommunicatio

The 1947 anti-trust lawsuit was settled by the 1956 consent decree which forced AT&T to exit all businesses not related to providing a national telecommunications network and which also required royalty-free licensing of all patents. For example, the Westrex sound recording business for movie production was sold to Litton. This undoubtedly reduced any appetite for deploying any customer premises recording devices which would be similar to recording technology used for entertainment purposes. In fact, telephone answering machines became popular only after the development of low cost Phillips cassette recording technology driven by entertainment markets. Note also that the gating of technology into the Bell System from Bell Laboratories via Western Electric was by design. Bell Labs was set up independently of and funded by AT&T Headquarters and Western Electric. This allowed Bell Labs to research (AT&T) and develop (WECo) technologies independently of short term business needs in order to prevent the Bell Operating Company regulated monopolies from stagnating, and it also prevented the system from being disrupted by short term engineering hacks. What were wanted were big innovations, thoughtfully applied.