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The Carterphone decision opened the door to any company, not just
AT&T, being able to connect devices to the PSTN. This was the hole
in the dike to later deregulation.<br>
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Johnny RYAN wrote:
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<pre wrap="">Dear Noel
(good point Vint - thanks)
Yes, as you say, the Altair and the rest of the personal computers had
not come until the mid 70s.
What I'm curious about is a more abstract point - on the modem side
rather than the computer side, why is Carterfone decision such a big
deal if modems were already available for use on the normal phone
line? Was it, as Vint says, price?
Johnny
--
My Next Book... <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://johnnyryan.wordpress.com/books/net-history-2010/">http://johnnyryan.wordpress.com/books/net-history-2010/</a>
On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:51 PM, Noel Chiappa<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu"><jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu></a> wrote:
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<pre wrap=""> > From: Johnny RYAN <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:johnnyryan1@gmail.com"><johnnyryan1@gmail.com></a>
> This is my first posting to this list.
Welcome!
> the Bell 103 modem in 1962 and Carterfone
> If AT&T sold modems commercially since 1962 (the 103 modem), why was
> the carterfone decision so important?
> ... does anybody recall why these things could not have happened with
> the Bell 103 from 1962 on? Was the 103 just intended for subscribers of
> expensive leased lines such as corporations or universities?
I think you're conflating two different things.
Carterfone was important because it allowed other people to build stuff to
connect up to the network (originally only acoustically, like the old
acoustic-coupler modems), _but_ I don't think it has any relationship to the
thing you're asking about (which I take to be the generic 'computer
communication revolution').
The answer to your question about 'why no computer communication revolution
in the 60s' is, I am pretty sure, in the technology of the era (both hardware
and software).
Remember that until things like the PDP-11 (1970 - although I suppose the
PDP-8, from 1965 on, also would count) there weren't a lot of small computers
to connect together. Personal computers were significantly later than that -
the Altair was 1975, and the Apple II (the first really plausible personal
PC) was 1977.
Ditto for software - the first time-sharing OS's were in the early 1960's,
but there were only a very few early on, and they ran on a very few large
mainframe systems. It wasn't until circa 1970 that that operational mode
became relatively common. Even the simplest of computer communication stuff
(remote dumb terminal dialed into a time-sharing machine) thus had to wait
for that.
Saying that, though, reminds me that there was a small amount of stuff
significantly earlier - you might want to look into the SABRE reservations
system, which dates back to 1957 or so (although the idea is a couple of
years older), for remote access in a more specialized system.
That's just my opinion, though - others may have a different take.
Noel
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