Background
Matthews was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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Gordon Matthews
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Education
University of Tulsa.
Career
After graduating from the University of Tulsa in 1959, Matthews joined the United States. 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 International Business Machines Corporation to help develop voice-activated cockpit controls which would help lessen similar types of catastrophic errors in the future.
After International Business Machines Corporation, Matthews went to work for Texas Instruments in 1966. Founding of VMX
In 1979, Gordon Matthews founded a company in Texas called Engineering and Computer Science Communications.
In 1979, Matthews also filed a method patent for voicemail, which was granted on 1 February 1983. Matthews patented what was called "Voice Message Exchange," United States. Patent Number.
4,371,752, and was a significant patent for voicemail.
While there was prior art for voicemail, Matthews" patent was never adjudicated and held up until its expiration. Matthews eventually held over thirty-five patents, many of which related to voicemail. Matthews later changed the name of his company to VMX Incorporated. and eventually developed a 3,000-user voice messaging system called the VMX/64.
VMX was arguably the first company to offer voicemail for sale commercially for corporate use.
Matthews was able to sell his system to several notable large corporations, such as 3M, Kodak, American Express, Intel, Hoffman Louisiana Roche, Corning Glass, Atlantic Richfield Company , Shell Canada and Westinghouse. This impressive list of early adopters started the ball rolling on corporate voicemail.
While some claim that VMX and Gordon Matthews invented voicemail or that he was the "father of voicemail", this claim is not true. The first inventor of record was Stephen Boies of International Business Machines Corporation in 1973, six years before Matthews filed his first patent.
International Business Machines Corporation released its first implementation of Speech Filing System (SFS) in 1975, four years before VMX was launched.
SMS was later called Audio Distribution System (ADS). Also, Delphi Communications of California first released their Delta 1 system in 1976, three years before the first patent filing by Matthews. Legacy of VMX
In 1988, when VMX was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was acquired by Opcom, a designer and seller of computer software products for handling telephone calls.
Opcom was acquired in 1994 by Octel Communications, the largest provider of voice mail equipment and services in the world.
In 1997, Octel was acquired by Lucent Technologies and spun off several years later as part of Avaya.
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Born
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Died
February 23, 2002 (aged 66)