TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: History of Hayes Modem

Re: History of Hayes Modem

Joe Morris (jcmorris@mitre.org)
Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:49:49 UTC

Justa Lurker <JustaLurker@att.net> writes:

> Scott Dorsey wrote:

>> The Great Idea Finder <ideas@telecom-digest.org> wrote:

>>> Dennis C. Hayes invented the PC modem in 1977, establishing the
>>> critical technology that allowed today's online and Internet
>>> industries to emerge and grow.

>> Well, THERE is some pretty impressive revisionism. Hey, by 1977 there
>> were even kits like the Pennywhistle aimed directly at the
>> microcomputer community. --scott

> Yes, but wasn't a key difference between the two that the early modems
> like the Pennywhistle, etc. were more or less totally transparent to
> the data stream and the connection had to be manually dialed on a
> separate phone's keypad, the user had to listen for an answer tone
> before hitting "connect", manually disconnected at the end of the
> call, etc.

... which is not too far from the description of the old Bell
offering: you got (for $25/month rental) a (huge!) 103A2 with a
separate key instrument; if you wanted to originate a call you either
dialed it manually or paid $BIGBUCKS per month for an autodialer (the
model number of which I've forgotten). Perhaps it's an artifact of
excessive age, but every time someone refers to a PNG file I have to
restrain myself from "correcting" it to PND (Present Next Digit -- the
line from the autodialer to the computer telling it that the
autodialer is ready to receive the next digit of the telephone number
to be called).

Joe Morris

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