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The telegraph and telephone are both wire-based electrical systems, and Alexander Graham Bell's success with the telephone came as a direct result of his attempts to improve the telegraph.

When Bell began experimenting with electrical signals, the telegraph had been an established means of communication for some 30 years. Although a highly successful system, the telegraph, with its dot-and-dash Morse code, was basically limited to receiving and sending one message at a time. Bell's extensive knowledge of the nature of sound and his understanding of music enabled him to conjecture the possibility of transmitting multiple messages over the same wire at the same time. Although the idea of a multiple telegraph had been in existence for some time, Bell offered his own musical or harmonic approach as a possible practical solution. His "harmonic telegraph" was based on the principle that several notes could be sent simultaneously along the same wire if the notes or signals differed in pitch.

By October 1874, Bell's research had progressed to the extent that he could inform his future father-in-law, Boston attorney Gardiner Greene Hubbard, about the possibility of a multiple telegraph. Hubbard, who resented the absolute control then exerted by the Western Union Telegraph Company, instantly saw the potential for breaking such a monopoly and gave Bell the financial backing he needed. Bell proceeded with his work on the multiple telegraph, but he did not tell Hubbard that he and Thomas Watson, a young electrician whose services he had enlisted, were also exploring an idea that had occurred to him that summer - that of developing a device that would transmit speech electrically.

While Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson worked on the harmonic telegraph at the insistent urging of Hubbard and other backers, Bell nonetheless met in March 1875 with Joseph Henry, the respected director of the Smithsonian Institution, who listened to Bell's ideas for a telephone and offered encouraging words. Spurred on by Henry's positive opinion, Bell and Watson continued their work. By June 1875 the goal of creating a device that would transmit speech electrically was about to be realized. They had proven that different tones would vary the strength of an electric current in a wire. To achieve success they therefore needed only to build a working transmitter with a membrane capable of varying electronic currents and a receiver that would reproduce these variations in audible frequencies.

On June 2, 1875, Alexander Graham Bell while experimenting with his technique called "harmonic telegraph" discovered he could hear sound over a wire. The sound was that of a twanging clock spring.

Bell's greatest success was achieved on March 10, 1876, marked not only the birth of the telephone but the death of the multiple telegraph as well. The communications potential contained in his demonstration of being able to "talk with electricity" far outweighed anything that simply increasing the capability of a dot-and-dash system could imply.

Alexander Graham Bell's notebook entry of 10 March 1876 describes his successful experiment with the telephone. Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."

Born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell was the son and grandson of authorities in elocution and the correction of speech. Educated to pursue a career in the same specialty, his knowledge of the nature of sound led him not only to teach the deaf, but also to invent the telephone.

Bell's unceasing scientific curiosity led to invention of the photophone, to significant commercial improvements in Thomas Edison's phonograph, and to development of his own flying machine just six years after the Wright Brothers launched their plane at Kitty Hawk. As President James Garfield lay dying of an assassin's bullet in 1881, Bell hurriedly invented a metal detector in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the fatal slug.
Alexander Graham Bell - Biography
In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Graham Bell invented his telephone. Bell might easily have been content with the success of his invention. His many laboratory notebooks demonstrate, however, that he was driven by a genuine and rare intellectual curiosity that kept him regularly searching, striving, and wanting always to learn and to create.

According to Phontel:
Mr. Willy Müller invented the world's first automatic answering machine in 1935. The first answering machine was a three-foot-tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath. The Ansafone, created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto (Phonetel), was the first answering machine sold in the USA, beginning in 1960.

According to Casio from Casio TAD History (Telephone Answering Devices):
CASIO COMMUNICATIONS created the telephone answering device (TAD) industry as we know it today by introducing the first commercially viable answering machine a quarter of a century ago. The product - the Model 400 - is now featured in the Smithsonian... ...In 1971, PhoneMate introduced one of the first commercially viable answering machines, the Model 400. The unit weighs 10 pounds, screens calls and holds 20 messages on a reel-to-reel tape. An earphone enables private message retrieval.

The first digital tad was invented by Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto of Japan in mid-1983. US patent 4,616,110 entitled Automatic Digital Telephone Answering.

Voicemail - Voice Mail
U.S. Patent No. 4,371,752 is the pioneer patent for what evolved into voice mail, and that patent belongs to Gordon Matthews. Gordon Matthews held over thirty-three patents. Gordon Matthews was the founder of the VMX company in Dallas, Texas that produced the world’s first commercial voice mail system, he has become known as the "Father of Voice Mail."

"When I call a business, I like to talk to a human" - Gordon Matthews.

Gordon Matthews - Voicemail Inventor
In 1979, Gordon Matthews formed his company, VMX, of Dallas (Voice Message Express). He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M.

According to Phontel:
Mr. Willy Müller invented the world's first automatic answering machine in 1935. The first answering machine was a three-foot-tall machine popular with Orthodox Jews who were forbidden to answer the phone on the Sabbath. The Ansafone, created by inventor Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto (Phonetel), was the first answering machine sold in the USA, beginning in 1960.

According to Casio from Casio TAD History (Telephone Answering Devices):
CASIO COMMUNICATIONS created the telephone answering device (TAD) industry as we know it today by introducing the first commercially viable answering machine a quarter of a century ago. The product - the Model 400 - is now featured in the Smithsonian... ...In 1971, PhoneMate introduced one of the first commercially viable answering machines, the Model 400. The unit weighs 10 pounds, screens calls and holds 20 messages on a reel-to-reel tape. An earphone enables private message retrieval.

The first digital tad was invented by Dr. Kazuo Hashimoto of Japan in mid-1983. US patent 4,616,110 entitled Automatic Digital Telephone Answering.

Voicemail - Voice Mail
U.S. Patent No. 4,371,752 is the pioneer patent for what evolved into voice mail, and that patent belongs to Gordon Matthews. Gordon Matthews held over thirty-three patents. Gordon Matthews was the founder of the VMX company in Dallas, Texas that produced the world’s first commercial voice mail system, he has become known as the "Father of Voice Mail."

"When I call a business, I like to talk to a human" - Gordon Matthews.

Gordon Matthews - Voicemail Inventor
In 1979, Gordon Matthews formed his company, VMX, of Dallas (Voice Message Express). He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M.
Gordon Matthews, who patented voicemail and founded VMX, died of a stroke. He was 65.

In the late seventies, Matthews first began working on the technology that would come to be called "voicemail." He patented it in 1982. His "Voice Message Exchange" managed electronic messages in a digital format.

At times, it seems Matthews saw his invention as a bit of a Frankenstein.
"I'm not really pleased with some of the things I see voicemail being used for today," Matthews once remarked.

"We didn't design this technology to annoy people, but rather make their lives easier."

His first inspiration to develop communications tools came when he was in the marines, which he joined as a pilot in 1959. A friend and fellow aviator was killed in a mid-air collision. Matthews suspected that the accident was caused when the pilot had to take his hands off the flight controls to adjust his radio frequency. After the marines, he went to work at IBM, helping to develop a voice-controlled military cockpit.

In 1966, Matthews moved to Dallas to work for Texas Instruments. He specialized in using computers to automate telephone systems of large corporations with multiple lines and then launched a series of his own businesses specializing in computers and telecommunications.

In 1979, Matthews formed his company, VMX, of Dallas, which stands for Voice Message Express. He applied for a patent in 1979 for his voicemail invention and sold the first system to 3M. His wife, Monika, recorded the first greeting on this first commercial voicemail.

He sold VMX and retired to Austin after 13 years.

"The market was growing faster than I could grow the company," Matthews once said

Matthews also developed the first minicomputer message switching system -- but his inventions were not limited to the world of business communications. An avid golfer, Matthews developed a monitoring system for golf course managers that would alert a marshal if a group took too long on a hole.

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