[ih] AT&T, carterfone, the 103, and why didnt BBSs start earlier?

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Johnny RYAN <johnnyryan1 at gmail.com>

    > 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