TELEPHONE ANSWERING APPARATUS WITH CALL-SCREENING CAPABILITIES

An electronic telephone answering apparatus which receives a connection from a remote telephone and reacts according to signals from the remote telephone. In one embodiment of the invention, the answering apparatus suppresses the connection between the remote telephone and the local telephone receiver until a predetermined condition is met by the remote telephone. This predetermined condition may include staying on the line a predetermined amount of time after a message has been communicated to the remote telephone, or communicating a selected key word for connection to the local telephone, such as "emergency". This embodiment allows for the selective connection of emergency or high priority calls when the operator of the local telephone does not wish to be interrupted except for these high priority calls. In another embodiment of the invention, an incoming message is speech recognized and stored in a memory. The recognized speech is matched to a list of key words, which are input by the operator of the local telephone, for selective later retrieval when the operator of the telephone desires. This embodiment allows for the storage of key words by the operator so that at a later time, the operator is able to retrieve selective groups of messages in their operator perceived priority and therefore handle more important messages prior to addressing lower priority messages.