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.

In 2001, Matthews was named chief intellectual property officer at VTel, where he'd been a member of the board since 1994.

"Gordon Matthews' mastery of developing effective ideas into defendable patents is legendary," stated Dick Snyder, VTel's chairman of the board in 2001.

Matthews suffered a stroke Wednesday at a Dallas hotel. He is survived by his wife and daughter, Christina.