Gerald John Owens

Title: Gerald John Owens and His Telephone Response System Innovations.

Introduction

Gerald John Owens was an inventor associated with Bell Telephone Laboratories. Based in Freehold, New Jersey, he contributed to telephone systems that used computer control to manage automated responses across multiple lines. His record includes 2 patents.

Latest Patents

Owens’s listed patents describe related approaches to delivering stored, digitally encoded messages to callers.

“Telephone Multiline Automatic Voice Answer System” uses a minicomputer to select digital words stored on disk and transfer them into dedicated memory buffers. A direct memory access output multiplexer then sends the buffered words to the appropriate telephone lines in a prescribed sequence, with limited processor intervention. The system can transfer multiple words during each read interval, supporting efficient delivery across several lines.

“Computer Controlled Automatic Response System” likewise uses a minicomputer to respond to requests from multiple lines. The computer selects digital words from disk and loads them into dedicated buffer registers assigned to output lines. A direct memory access multiplexer monitors system address signals and controls the transfer of the stored words to requesting lines without requiring the processor to manage each transfer.

Career Highlights

Owens’s patent work focused on combining computer memory, stored digital signals, and multiplexing to automate telephone inquiry responses. The designs aimed to coordinate multiple callers while reducing the central processor’s role in the repeated task of sending message data to output lines.

Collaborations

Owens was associated with Bell Telephone Laboratories. His listed coworkers include Kevin Christopher O’Brien and Nicholas John Kolettis.

Conclusion

Gerald John Owens’s two listed patents document computer-controlled systems for delivering stored responses over multiple telephone lines, with multiplexing techniques designed to make message transfers more efficient.