It was only in the 1980s that Americans became able to own their own phones (from non-Western Electric manufacturers even!), which was the context in which features like “speed dial” (programmable one-button dialing) and wireless phones (handsets transmitting over the air short range to wired base units) debuted, as well as the trope of novelty phones as a magazine-subscription bonus
The ‘80s also saw answering machines, which would answer calls on an unattended line, play a user-recorded message, and then allow callers to record a message on tape for later playback, the ancestral origin of voicemail
The next major phone novelty I remember from my childhood was “Caller ID”, an add-on subscription service which would allow you, using compatible phones and accessories, to see what phone number a call was originating from before you picked up. While this identifying is now considered standard it had only been approximable after-the-fact by dialing *69 which, for a fee, would call back the last number to call you
The 1995 No Doubt song “Spiderwebs” about using your answering machine to screen your calls, only picking up and continuing live if the overheard one-way caller proves promising, that was really a new thing back then!
Previously, screening calls and taking messages had been a major duty of human secretaries (as a Hollywood assistant in the 2000s, they still were then) and the ability reserved to their employers (with individuals able to subscribe to live off-site answering *services*)
Before 1980s technology merely patching incoming calls to a particular organization’s internal phone system often required one or more physical switchboard operators; as technology progressed this ability became integrated (often confusingly) into user-operated equipment, with determination of direction handed off to computer directories or doubled up with physical reception duties, consider Pam from The Office
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