Gordon Matthews
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gordon Matthews ( Born ? 1936, Tulsa, Oklahoma - Died February 23, 2002, Dallas, Texas) was an American inventor and businessman and a pioneer inventor of voicemail. Because of this, his nickname became "The Father of Voice Mail" although the real inventor of voicemail technology was Stephen Boies of IBM.
[edit] History
After graduating from the University of Tulsa in 1959, Matthews joined the U.S. Marine Corps as an aviator.
Matthews' involvement in trying to mesh human voices to technology was many years in the making. A fellow friend and pilot perished in a mid-air collision, which Matthews believed was caused when he momentarily took his eyes off of his plane's controls to adjust his radio frequency. After he was discharged from the military, Matthews went to work for IBM to help develop voice-activated cockpit controls which would help lessen similar types of catastrophic errors in the future. After IBM, Matthews went to work for Texas Instruments in 1966.
In 1979, Matthews formed his first company, VMX (Voice Message Exchange) and filed a patent, which was granted on 1 February 1983. Matthews patented what was called "Voice Message Exchange," U.S. Patent No. 4,371,752, which is the pioneer patent for what later evolved into today's voicemail. Matthews eventually held over thirty-five patents, many of which related to voicemail.
Gordon Matthews was the founder of the VMX company in Dallas, Texas that produced the world’s first commercial voice mail system (small by today's standards). VMX was acquired in the "early days" of voicemail by Opcom. Opcom was acquired by Octel Communications, the largest provider of voice mail equipment and services in the world. Octel was later acquired by Lucent and then spun off as part of Avaya.
At the time of his death from complications relating to a stroke on 23 February 2002, Matthews was 65, and was survived by his wife, Monika, and only daughter, Christina.
