Editing Voicemail (section)

=== Invention ===
The first public records describing voice recording were reported in a New York newspaper and the Scientific American in November 1877. [[Thomas A. Edison]] had announced the invention of his "phonograph" saying "the object was to record telephone messages and transmit them again by telephone." Edison applied for a US patent in December 1877 and shortly thereafter demonstrated the machine to publishers, the US Congress and President [[Rutherford B. Hayes]]. In an article outlining his own ideas of the future usefulness of his machine Edison's list began with "Letter writing, and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer." In other words, "voice messages" or "Voice-mail". By 1914, Edison's phonograph business included a dictating machine (the [[Phonograph cylinder|Ediphone]]) and the "Telescribe", a machine combining the phonograph and the telephone, which recorded both sides of telephone conversations.<ref>{{Cite web |title=About this Collection {{!}} Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies {{!}} Digital Collections {{!}} Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/about-this-collection/ |access-date=2024-02-13 |website=Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA}}</ref>

For nearly one hundred years, there were few innovations or advances in telephone services. Voicemail was the result of innovations in telephone products and services made possible by developments in computer technology during the 1970s. These innovations began with the [[Motorola Pageboy]], a simple "pager" or "beeper" introduced in 1974 that was generally offered in conjunction with answering services that handled busy&nbsp;/ no-answer overloads and after hours calls for businesses and professionals. Operators wrote down a caller's message, sent a page alert or "beep" and when the party called back, an operator dictated the message.

With the introduction of "voice" pagers, like the [[Motorola Pageboy II]] operators could transmit a voice message directly to the pager and the user could hear the message. However, messages arrival was often untimely and privacy issues, as well as the high cost, eventually caused the demise of these services. By the mid 1970s digital storage and analog to digital conversion devices had emerged and paging companies began handling client messages electronically. Operators recorded a short message (five to six seconds, e.g. "please call Mr. Smith") and the messages were delivered automatically when the client called the answering service. It would only take a short step for the first voicemail application to be born.

Computer manufacturers, telephone equipment manufacturers, and software firms began developing more sophisticated solutions as more powerful and less expensive computer processors and storage devices became available. This set the stage for a creation of a broad spectrum of computer based Central Office and Customer Premises Equipment that would eventually support enhanced voice solutions such as voicemail, [[audiotex]], [[interactive voice response]] (IVR) and [[speech recognition]] solutions that began emerging in the 1980s. However, broad adoption of these products and services would depend on the global proliferation of touch tone phones and mobile phone services which would not occur until the late 1980s.

==== Inventor controversy ====
Many contributed to the creation of the modern-day voicemail. Legal battles ensued for decades.<ref>{{cite web
   |url=https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1985/10/28/66509/
   |title=The Legal Battles Over Voice Messaging: A young inventor from Florida says the technology is his. So does a small company in Texas. Both have sued to protect it.
   |author=Dexter Hutchins
   |work=Fortune
   |date=October 28, 1985
}}</ref> The {{citation needed span|true first inventor|date=October 2021}} of voicemail, patent number 4,124,773 (Audio Storage and Distribution System), is Robin Elkins.<ref>{{cite web
   |url=http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4124773.PN.&OS=PN/4124773&RS=PN/4124773
   |title=United States Patent: 4124773
   |publisher=United States Patent and Trademark Office
}}</ref> "Though Elkins received a patent in 1978, telecommunications giants began offering voicemail without paying Elkins a penny in royalties."<ref>{{cite news
   |url=http://www.inventone.com/articles/survive_herald.asp
   |title=How to Survive the Road from Invention to Marketplace
   |author=Mimi Whitefield
   |work=The Miami Herald
   |date=February 5, 1996
}}</ref> "Elkins never expected to spend 10 years of his life battling some of the world's largest corporations, either. But once he patented his system, he figured he should protect it."<ref>{{cite news
   |url=http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1995-08-07/business/9508030727_1_elkins-points-soul-saxophonist-lasers-cost
   |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120916210059/http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1995-08-07/business/9508030727_1_elkins-points-soul-saxophonist-lasers-cost
   |url-status=dead
   |archive-date=September 16, 2012
   |title=Inventor Battles to Protect Patents
   |author=Viki McCash
   |work=Sun Sentinel
   |date=August 7, 1995
}}</ref> Later, Elkins successfully licensed his patented technology to IBM, DEC, and WANG, among many others. Unfortunately, his patent did not address simultaneity of voice message access and storage and the application for patent was filed after the patent application of the system patented by Kolodny and Hughes, as described below.