T
he Eureka moment arrived as he stood holding a pay phone at the Denver International Airport.
Ken Jones was talking on a pay phone one afternoon back in 1983 ... when he came up with an excellent idea: What if you could find a way to use telephones to retrieve information from databases, or route calls by using the touch tones on the dialing pad by combining state-ofthe-art computer technology with state-of-the-art digitized voice devices? During the next 27 years, this innovative entrepreneur launched half a dozen different digital-based communications companies – while spearheading the development of many of the “voice mail” and interactive phone applications the world relies on today. By Tom Nugent
Kenneth E. Jones (B.S. ’68) was about to undergo a transformation that inspired him to launch a 27-year career as an entrepreneur with a knack for building and then managing successful “startup” ventures. During the next two and a half decades, he would have a dramatic impact on the rapidly evolving world of electronic communications in the 21st century. But he didn’t know it then. All Jones knew – on this cold afternoon in late January of 1983 – was that his non-stop airplane flight from Denver to San Francisco had just been delayed due to a howling Rocky Mountain blizzard. Jones was in the middle of calling his wife, Kim, long-distance, in order to tell her about the inevitable delay. The former UNL chemical engineering student entered his credit card number and listened to a series of beeps and clicks, as his credit card was electronically verified and the longdistance charges were authorized. A moment later, after the transaction had been completed, a flat and obviously tape-recorded voice came on the line and
said two very simple words: “Thank you!” “Wait a minute,” he told himself as the phone began ringing at his home near San Francisco. “That was a recording. The phone company just ‘thanked’ me for using my credit card to make a long-distance call ... but they did it automatically, without having to rely on an employee. How did they do that?” He immediately asked himself, if I could enter some numbers and get a thank you, I wonder if I could enter data and find out what the flight departure time will be? Or the closing prices of various stocks and bonds? By the time he got to California he had a long list of applications that might make the touch tone telephone the average man’s home computer. As he chatted with his spouse, California attorney Kim Lauridsen-Jones (J.D. ’71), his mind was racing. Jones was a chemical engineer (and a Harvard MBA), and he knew little about telecommunications. As a matter of fact, he’d spent the previous three years running the operations of a meat-processing company based in Iowa. He knew lots about the price of hogs and lots about the NEBRASKAMAGAZINE
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