Posts Tagged ‘telephone’
Sneaker Net Goes Global…
An art project that began three years ago by prompting people to embed USB thumb drives in structures has caught on like wildfire.
Dead Drops, as the project is called, now has more than 1,200 locations worldwide where anyone with a computer and a USB port can anonymously plug in and upload or download files — sharing who they are or what they care about or love.
The premise: cement a thumb drive into a wall with just the port protruding, and leave its location with photos in the Dead Drops central database.
According to its creator, German artist Aram Bartholl, the project is a way to “un-cloud” file sharing — that is, remove it from the Internet in a time when governments are spying on the online public.
“Dead Drops is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space,” Dead Drops’ manifesto states…
Read the whole story at Computerworld.
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As we skulk toward Bethlehem, we might recall that it was on this date in 1983 that the last phone call was made in the U.S. on a hand-cranked (magneto) telephone system. In 1981, the local telephone company in Bryant Pond — serving 440 customers (sharing 220 lines), and operating from a two-position magneto switchboard in the living room of owners Barbara and Elden Hathaway– was purchased by the Oxford County Telephone & Telegraph Company, a nearby larger independent company. A movement called “Don’t Yank The Crank” was organized by David Perham and Brad Hooper in an effort to keep their beloved crank phones. The effort stalled the transition for two years, but ultimately failed: the last “crank” calls took place on October 11, 1983, when a modern dial exchange was put into service. A memorial statue has become a local landmark…
Amaze your friends!…
From the extraordinary resource that is The Public Domain Review, a compendium of do-it-yourself diversions from 1820– all “so clearly explained, as to be within the reach of the most limited capacity.”
Page through Endless Amusement for more things that it was apparently OK to try at home back then.
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As we count our fingers to be sure that they’re all still there, we might recall that it was on this date in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell first spoke through his experimental “telephone”– to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room. Bell wrote in his notebook, “I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: ‘Mr. Watson–come here–I want to see you.’ To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said.”
Bell’s lab notebook, March 10, 1876
There’s always room…
Jell-O ad by Maxfield Parrish
As National Jell-O Week (the second full week of February) draws to an end, “16 Fascinating Facts About Jell-O.”
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As we marvel at a dish that’s equally-appropriately approached with a spoon or a fork, we might recall that it was on this date in 1968 that the first-ever 9-1-1 call was placed by Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite, from Haleyville City Hall, to U.S. Rep. Tom Bevill, at the city’s police station.
Emergency numbers date back to 1937, when the British began to use 999. But experience showed that three repeated digits led to many mistaken/false alarms. The Southern California Telephone Co. experimented in 1946 in Los Angeles with 116 for emergencies.
But 911– using just the first and last digits available– yielded the best results, and went into widespread use in the 1980s when 911 was adopted as the standard emergency number across most of the country under the North American Numbering Plan.
The secret, revealed…
By Alex Koplin (Typcut) and David Meiklejohn; Alex explains here. (Thanks, Flowing Data)
As we reengage with our inner Bobby McFerrin, we might recall that it was on this date in 1962 that the first communications satellite, Telstar I, was launched. An ATT project, it was a collaboration among Bell Laboratories, NASA, the British General Post Office, and the French National PTT aimed at communications over the Atlantic Ocean. And indeed, it relayed the first television pictures, telephone calls and fax images through space and provided the first live transatlantic television feed.
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