History is murky on the burning question...

History is murky on the burning question of who invented the telephone answering machine.

But Neal Buglewicz, a former Hermosa Beach inventor and one of the founders of Torrance-based PhoneMate, gets a lot of credit for his pioneering efforts in coming up with the first marketable machine for use in the home. And although his name never appears in history books, the machine he was instrumental in developing recently became part of the Smithsonian Institution’s collection of Americana, and it is now on display in Washington as part of a larger exhibit.

“In terms of commercial and consumer viability, it was the first” telephone answering machine, says Jim Oblak, PhoneMate’s director of marketing.

PhoneMate recently donated the machine to the Smithsonian after learning that the museum was planning an exhibit called “Information Age: People, Information and Technology.” The exhibit opened in May and runs indefinitely.

Several hundred items are part of the exhibit, from Samuel F. B. Morse’s telegraph to the electronic bugs uncovered after the Watergate break-in; even a smoke detector that contained one of the bugs is displayed.

“It basically traces the history of electrical communications from the telegraph in the 1840s up to the development of the electronic computers and the merging of these two technologies,” said Bernard Finn, a curator at the institution’s National Museum of American History.

As for the telephone answering device in the Smithsonian, it’s called the Model 400. Its precursor was the Model 700, which Buglewicz invented. He and his wife assembled it themselves in their garage on Ardmore Avenue in Hermosa Beach.

“It was essentially two inexpensive tape recorders of the type used in the introduction of the old ‘Mission Impossible’ TV series, whereby Peter Graves was given his instructions,” Buglewicz said in a letter he faxed from Singapore, where he now lives.

In the late ‘60s, Buglewicz and some friends formed a company, Tron Tech, to market the invention. The company later was renamed PhoneMate.

As for the Model 400--the one in the Smithsonian--it was introduced in 1971, according to PhoneMate. Big and bulky by today’s standards--it weighed 10 pounds--it was the first machine widely marketable to consumers, according to the company.

Buglewicz long ago left PhoneMate, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan’s Asahi Corp., and he recently attempted to launch another telephone answering machine company in Singapore. However, he said his money--and luck--ran out, and he has been “goose farming” ever since.

In other words, he is looking for another golden egg.