Posts Tagged ‘telephones’
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic”*…
In the 1930s, ATT was rolling out dial phones to the American public…
This short subject newsreel was shown in movie theaters the week before a town’s or region’s telephone exchange was to be converted to dial service. It’s extremely short—a little over a minute, like a PSA. The film concisely explains how to use a dial telephone, including how to dial, how to recognize dial tone, and how to recognize a busy signal…
For a look into the then-future (the now present), fast forward just over 50 years, to the early 90s and to ATT’s predictions…
More in ATT Tech Channel.
[TotH to @BoingBoing for a pointer to the first video]
* Arthur C. Clarke (a 1976 interview with whom is in the Tech Channel trove)
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As we ponder progress, we might send , ATT-related birthday greetings to Robert Woodrow Wilson; he was born on this date in 1936. An astronomer, he detected– with Bell Labs colleague Arno Penzias– cosmic microwave background radiation: “relic radiation”– that’s to say, the “sound “– of the Big Bang…. familiar to those of old enough to remember watching an old-fashioned television after the test pattern was gone (when there was no broadcast signal received): the “fuzz” we saw and the static-y sounds we heard, were the “relic radiation” being picked up.
Their 1964 discovery earned them the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Phreaking out…
Cover of the Spring 2012 issue of 2600
In preparation for “treat-ing” tonight’s parade of freaks, one might pause to pay respects to 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, an American publication that specializes in publishing technical information on a variety of subjects including telephone switching systems, Internet protocols and services, as well as general news concerning the computer underground. The magazine’s moniker comes from the “phreaker” discovery (by John “Cap’n Crunch” Draper and friends in the 1960s) that the transmission of a 2600 hertz tone (which could be produced perfectly with a plastic toy whistle given away free with Cap’n Crunch cereal) over a long-distance trunk connection gained access to “operator mode” and allowed the user to explore aspects of the telephone system that were not otherwise accessible… like free long distance calls. (The seed money for Apple was in part raised by the two Steves’ sale of “phreaking boxes” designed to do just this.)
2600 has become a journal-of-record for “Grey Hat” hackers– tech explorers concerned to push past the limits inherent to the design of a given technological device or application (as opposed to White Hats, who are ideologically motivated to do good, or Black Hats, who pursue selfish– often illegal– gain). So its current editorial focus is largely on the web and its devices, increasingly on mobile implementations and application.
But 2600 honors its roots, among other ways, by maintaining a gallery of photos of payphones around the world; for example…
Peshlawar, Pakistan
Moscow, Russia (The payphones only accept one ruble coins, an obsolete denomination)
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As we wax nostalgic, we might send illuminating birthday greetings to Narinder Singh Kapany; he was born on this date in 1926. While growing up in Dehradun in northern India, a teacher informed him that light only traveled in a straight line. He took this as a challenge and made the study of light his life work, initially at Imperial College, London. In January 1954, Nature published his report of successfully transmitting images through fiber bundles– and Dr. Kapany became the father of fiber optics (a name he coined). Dr. Kapany ultimately migrated to the U.S., where he continued to invent (he holds over 100 patents), taught, started successful companies, and became a philanthropist. Fortune named him one of seven ‘Unsung Heroes’ in their “Businessmen of the Century” issue (November 22, 1999). It was, of course, the implementation of Dr. Kapany’s work that rendered “phreaking” moot.
Happy Halloween!
from the NY Public Library’s Flickr set of Halloween cards…
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