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

[Johnny RYAN]

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... http://johnnyryan.wordpress.com/books/net-history-2010/




On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 8:51 PM, Noel Chiappa<jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>    > 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
>