Gordon Matthews

Gordon Matthews ( Born ? 1936, Tulsa, Oklahoma - Died February 23, 2002, Dallas, Texas) was an American inventor and businessman and started one of the first companies which pioneered the commercialization of voicemail.

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, five years after IBM’s SFS (ADS) system and three years after Delphi’s Delta 1 system were first operational, a company was founded in Texas by Gordon Matthews called ECS Communications (the name was later changed to VMX). According to Jay Stoffer, founder of Delphi Communications, Gordon Matthews learned about Delphi’s voicemail prior to his founding VMX. Regardless of how he was inspired, Matthews eventually founded VMX which 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 La Roche, Corning Glass, Arco, 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 IBM five years before VMX was founded. In 1979, Matthews filed a method patent for voicemail, which was granted on 1 February 1983. Matthews patented what was called "Voice Message Exchange," U.S. Patent No. 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.

When VMX was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was acquired by Opcom. 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.

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, son Gordon, and only daughter, Christina.

Links

• On-line profile of Matthews
• Matthews' obituary
• On-line interview with Matthews

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Name	Matthews, Gordon
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Date of death	2002
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