What three independently developing areas converged to create the invention of IVR?
Advanced Telephony, Stored Program Control (SPC), and Speech Synthesis
The invention of Interactive Voice Response is described not as a single moment, but as the successful merging of at least three distinct, concurrently developing fields. First, Advanced Telephony provided the standardization of DTMF signaling to reliably transmit computerized signals over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Second, Stored Program Control (SPC) involved the necessary development of real-time computational power capable of handling high-volume transactional processing instantly. Third, Speech Synthesis provided the capability for the machine to generate understandable spoken output to communicate results back to the user. The true inventive act was the cohesive integration of these proven, separate components.
