From kahogan@ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU Fri Dec 1 20:08:33 CST 1995 Article: 124344 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:124344 Path: uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!kahogan From: kahogan@ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Kevin A. Hogan) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Octothorpe (The Answer) [from comp.dcom.telecom] Date: 30 Nov 1995 17:51:57 GMT Organization: University of California Society of Electrical Engineers Lines: 102 Message-ID: <49kqvt$3o3@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ucsee.eecs.berkeley.edu Status: R [I came across this article in comp.dcom.telecom and figured that it had some relevance here, as the "#" character and associated discussion is a recurring thread. It _sounds_ truthful . . . -- Kevin ] >From carlsen@hotair.att.com Thu Nov 30 09:44:41 PST 1995 Article: 56610 of comp.dcom.telecom Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 16:21:55 -0500 From: carlsen@hotair.att.com (Ralph Carlsen) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Octothorpe (The Answer) Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: [comp.dcom.telecom/8f69725707bf3ce1a467e58a391263b3] X-Submissions-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Administrivia-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 15, Issue 497, Message 5 of 6 Lines: 77 Pat, The following explains where "octothorpe" really came from. I am sending this to you because, as you will see, there are very few people who could know this story. The reason I am writing at this time is because I volunteered for the AT&T Lay Off package after 34 years of service at Bell Labs so I may not be around much longer. During the past year I have enjoyed reading your news group, and I have used your archives a couple of times (once to get "octothorpe"). Your comments and notes on the postings suggest you and I would agree on lots of things related to our telecom industry. Ralph Carlsen THE REAL SOURCE OF THE WORD "OCTOTHORPE" First, where did the symbols * and # come from? In about 1961 when DTMF dials were still in development, two Bell Labs guys in data communications engineering (Link Rice and Jack Soderberg) toured the USA talking to people who were thinking about telephone access to computers. They asked about possible applications, and what symbols should be used on two keys that would be used exclusively for data applications. The primary result was that the symbols should be something available on all standard typewriter keyboards. The * and # were selected as a result of this study, and people did not expect to use those keys for voice services. The Bell System in those days did not look internationally to see if this was a good choice for foreign countries. Then in the early 1960s Bell Labs developed the 101 ESS which was the first stored program controlled switching system (it was a PBX). One of the first installations was at the Mayo Clinic. This PBX had lots of modern features (Call Forwarding, Speed Calling, Directed Call Pickup, etc.), some of which were activated by using the # sign. A Bell Labs supervisor DON MACPHERSON went to the Mayo Clinic just before cut over to train the doctors and staff on how to use the new features on this state of the art switching system. During one of his lectures he felt the need to come up with a word to describe the # symbol. Don also liked to add humor to his work. His thought process which took place while at the Mayo Clinic doing lectures was as follows: - There are eight points on the symbol so "OCTO" should be part of the name. - We need a few more letters or another syllable to make a noun, so what should that be? (Don MacPherson at this point in his life was active in a group that was trying to get JIM THORPE's Olympic medals returned from Sweden) The phrase THORPE would be unique, and people would not suspect he was making the word up if he called it an "OCTOTHORPE". So Don Macpherson began using the term Octothorpe to describe the # symbol in his lectures. When he returned to Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ, he told us what he had done, and began using the term Octothorpe in memos and letters. The term was picked up by other Bell Labs people and used mostly for the fun of it. Some of the documents which used the term Octothorpe found their way to Bell Operating Companies and other public places. Over the years, Don and I have enjoyed seeing the term Octothorpe appear in documents from many different sources. Don MacPherson retired about eight years ago, and I will be retiring in about six weeks. Ralph Carlsen These are, of course, my remembrances and are not any official statement of AT&T or the subsequent 3 companies. [TELECOM Dgiest Editor's note: Thank you very much for sharing. This is indeed an interesting report. Do you think you could get Don MacPherson to join us here among the Digest readership? PAT] -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kevin Hogan -- kahogan@ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU -- (510) 664-2533 President, University of California Society of Electrical Engineers WWW Home Page: http://ucsee.EECS.Berkeley.EDU/~kahogan/index.html From dpeschel@u.washington.edu Tue Jan 9 15:52:16 CST 1996 Article: 127884 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:127884 Path: uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!news.u.washington.edu!dpeschel From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (Derek Peschel) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Time zones/Phone codes Date: 9 Jan 1996 03:10:18 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 19 Message-ID: <4csmaq$9nk@nntp4.u.washington.edu> References: <4cgjcp$gk4@barnacle.iol.ie> <4chmef$mds@fcnews.fc.hp.com> <30ed59bb.463841@nntp.ix.netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: saul6.u.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: dpeschel Status: R In article , Edward Rice wrote: >on top. If you take all the NANP codes assigned up until about ten years >ago and sort them by number of pulses, you will in fact see an ordering >that takes both current size and expected (at time of assignment) growth >into account. Area codes used to follow another pattern as well. When they were first assigned in 1952, states with only one code had 0 as the middle digit, and states with two or more codes had 1 as the middle digit. See the September 1952 _Bell System Technical Journal_ (p. 851). Since then, some single-code states were split (206 for Washington became 206 and 509). Also, split states may have a mixture of 0 and 1 as the middle digit. So much for the pattern. -- Derek From uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!news Thu Aug 26 12:11:41 CDT 1993 Article: 47137 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!moe.ksu.ksu.edu!hobbes.physics.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!news From: jones@pyrite (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) Subject: Re: Further computers seen in films... Sender: news@news.uiowa.edu (News) Message-ID: <1993Aug26.134812.5109@news.uiowa.edu> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1993 13:48:12 GMT References: <2331@dsinet> Nntp-Posting-Host: pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu Organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Lines: 50 Status: R >From article <2331@dsinet>, by daveb@jaws (David Breneman): > > Fax machines, in one form or another, have been around since the ... ... time of Napoleon II! The fax machine is an older invention than the telephone, and the first fax line was installed between Paris and occupied Italy during the second empire. Curiously, the second fax system in the world was installed in China (telegraphs are nice, but Morse didn't invent a code for Chinese). Of course, the original fax machine sent only two lines per second, and it was over a meter tall, with a cast iron framework and a meter long pendulum used to provide the time base and to scan the original. In addition, the original document had to be written in conductive ink, but it was still a useful breakthrough in communications. (My source is a book about the history of everyday objects. I think that's the title, and I forget the author.) > ... Remember AP Wirephotos (tm) in the newspaper? Indeed. In my childhood, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago had an exhibit with a 75 baud Teletype that received the wire service news and next to it, a Telefax (brand) fax machine that received the wirephotos. Both ran continuously, and it was fun to watch them work. The Telefax printer used a helical bar to scan the page, with a typewriter ribbon between the bar, the paper, and a fairly sharp platten. When black was to be printed, there was a click as bar and platten were pressed together. > ... If the drums got > out of sync, the resulting FAX looked like a TV image with the > horizontal hold out of adjustment. Curiously, it was a solution to the problem of synchronizing two pendulums using electromechanical tricks that led to the development of the original pendulotelefacsimily machines back in the 19th century. The trick is to have one pendulum, the transmitter, close a contact every time it reaches one extreme of its swing, and that energises an electromagnet that pulls the other pendulum to the same extreme (through a long distance chain of relays, of course). The same line can be used to drop the pen to make the receiver draw black as it scans the output page, simple mechanical means can be used to hold the pen up in the "sync" area at the edge of the page. The only thing that throws this kind of sync system off is a strong black band down a long region of the transmitted page. Briefly energising the sync magnet for normal text and line drawings does nothing, and even long but aperiodic energizations won't throw the thing off. Doug Jones jones@cs.uiowa.edu From uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.columbia.edu!konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu!gmw1 Fri Aug 6 11:28:56 CDT 1993 Article: 45889 of alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!math.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!news.columbia.edu!konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu!gmw1 From: gmw1@konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu (Gabe M Wiener) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Number Pads Date: 6 Aug 1993 14:32:00 GMT Organization: Columbia University Lines: 77 Message-ID: <23tq10$9fr@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu> References: <23pfh3$dca@news.bu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: konichiwa.cc.columbia.edu Status: R In article ddmiller@austin.ibm.com (David D. Miller) writes: >>For example, on telephones and some cash registers, the numbers go like: >> 1 2 3 >> 4 5 6 >> 7 8 9 >> 0 >>And on calculators and comp keyboards they go like: >> 7 8 9 >> 4 5 6 >> 1 2 3 >> 0 >> >The tale I heard (and I can't remember the source, so this is truly >folklore) was that (some) people were already familiar >with the calculator style keyboards, and were proficient enough to >dial telephone numbers too fast if they had put the 789 row on top. >That sounds an awful lot like the canonical "qwerty" explanation to me.... No, this is not the reason. When Bell Labs did the keypad layout tests in the 60's, they discovered that a 3x3 matrix with a separate 0 key (the * and # were blocked out at the time) was the most expedient arrangement. So, the question came up as to which way to arrange the keys. They contacted many of the calculator manufacturers, who had *no idea* why they arranged their keys bottom-up. The decision to arrange telephone keys top-down is quite obvious, actually. If you don't, then the alphabet on the keys won't be right. The first thing you'd see is PRS, and this is no good. Also, having 1, 2, and 3 on the top row makes it look *something* like a rotary dial. Some interesting telephone dial trivia: - Prior to the development of the Strowger dial, the first Strowger systems worked on a 5-wire system, and the phones had 3 buttons to direct the call. To place a call, you'd go off hook, and if you were trying to ring, say, #573, you'd push the first button five times, the second button seven times, and the third button three times. You'd then wind the magneto. If your phone rang while you did this, then the other party's phone was ringing. If your phone didn't ring, their phone was busy. 5 wires: One for each of the buttons, one voice, one common return. - When Automatic Electric brought out the first rotary dial phones, they had ten numeric finger holes, plus an 11th, which was marked "Long Distance". In fact, the 11th hole sent the same 10 pulses as the 0, but the manufacturers were unsure if the public would readily grasp the concept of using 0 both as a numeral and as a way to raise the operator. - Standard rotary dials had "Z" at the 0 position until after WWII. - There were problems for many years when cities would pre-assign 4-digit trunk numbers prior to automation. For years, people would be taught to ask for "Monroe oh-oh-six-two" and not "Monroe naught-naught-six-two." When they got their dials, they dialed Monroe OO62 and not 0062, which made telco regret they had ever stopped people from saying "naught naught" - The modern lettering scheme was not the only one in use. The Strowger Automatic Director, one model of early switch, used the following layout. ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 IP AJR BKS CLT DMU ENV FW GX HY O The thought here was that there was less chance of conflict with common exchange names, and no chance of 0/O or 1/I confusion. -- Gabe Wiener -- gmw1@columbia.edu -- N2GPZ -- PGP on request Sound engineering, recording, and digital mastering for classical music "I am terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music will be put on records forever." --Sir Arthur Sullivan From uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!claird Thu Jan 7 15:07:55 CST 1993 Article: 33028 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!menudo.uh.edu!sugar!claird From: claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird) Subject: What happened to "smart buildings"? and three tangents Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900 Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 18:46:00 GMT Message-ID: Lines: 47 Status: R Well? There was a time, only a few years (months?) ago, when articles about "smart buildings" filled the popular press. I don't see 'em, now. Did buildings get smart, without me noticing, or is this another trend that's gone sideways, or what? I'm looking for answers from people who know the construction and real estate industries, not just speculative puffing. ... although if we were specu- lating, I certainly have a fund of stories about dumb buildings ... Marginally related: have telephone switches truly become more armored, or is that just another tall tale? In 1969, I remember my father just about having to wrestle the con- tractor for his house to get him to put *two*-wire cable in *some* of the walls, anticipating that *some*day there might be a desire to have a telephone in a different room than the planned one. We definitely were made to feed like blockade runners every time we bought another clunky hand- set at KMart. The rhetoric that always accompanied these adventures in telecommunications was, "Well, The Phone Company doesn't want you using any equipment it hasn't ap- proved, because you might put a bad signal on the line, and hurt its switches." Was there some technical reality behind this, or was it just polite language for AT&T to say, "Mine, all mine, and you can't do anything about it!"? Marginally related to that last: really, it wasn't long ago that having a telephone that was mobile enough to be unplugged and plugged back in SOMEWHERE ELSE was an extrava- gance even on the psychological level. I have a vague memory that, in some times and places (before WWI, Eastern Europe?), it was not unusual for The Telephone in a house to have its own room, that is, a cabinetwork arrangement that would remind us of a telephone booth--that's inside the house, right. Am I remembering something real, or was this a dream? Yet another tangent: are telephone boothes on the way out in countries other than the United States? I assume lawyers and homeless have killed 'em in the States, but I know I've seen them recently, even indoors, in modern parts of other countries. -- Cameron Laird claird@Neosoft.com (claird%Neosoft.com@uunet.uu.net) +1 713 267 7966 claird@litwin.com (claird%litwin.com@uunet.uu.net) +1 713 996 8546 From uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!spool.mu.edu!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!cats.ucsc.edu!haynes Thu Jan 7 18:24:00 CST 1993 Article: 33032 of alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!spool.mu.edu!agate!darkstar.UCSC.EDU!cats.ucsc.edu!haynes From: haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Telephones (Re: What happened to "smart buildings"? and three tangents) Date: 7 Jan 1993 22:17:57 GMT Organization: University of California; Santa Cruz Lines: 125 Message-ID: <1iia6lINNde9@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: hobbes.ucsc.edu Status: R In article claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird) writes: >adventures in telecommunications was, "Well, The Phone >Company doesn't want you using any equipment it hasn't ap- >proved, because you might put a bad signal on the line, >and hurt its switches." Was there some technical reality >behind this, or was it just polite language for AT&T to >say, "Mine, all mine, and you can't do anything about it!"? This is a long story that really belongs in one of the telcom newsgroups, but >From sometime in the late 1800s Theodore Vail who was Pres. of AT&T at the time took a cue from United Shoe Machinery and decided that the telephone compnay would own all the apparatus and lease it to the customers. Note in passing that this doctrine was also taken to heart by Tom Watson, Sr. in IBM Corp some years later. Now the telephone companies being regulated public utilities, the rates they charge and the terms and conditions of using the service all became matters of state law; so the prohibition of customers attaching anything to the telephone network had the force of law as well as being the policy of the company. The only exceptions were for private lines, where there were classes of service for burglar alarms and radio and TV networks and various other things. Now there are some real potential problems is having just anybody connecting things to the telephone wires. You might unintentionally connect the power line to the telephone line and cause a telephone lineman to get shocked and maybe fall off a pole. You might send an amplified signal down the line such that it caused intereference to every other pair of wires in the same cable. You might get injured yourself if you happened to have your hands on the telephone wire when the phone rang, because they use 90 or more volts AC; you could get shocked and fall off a ladder or something. For private lines they had to assume the customer people making connections knew more or less what they were doing and were able to abide by the rules about what they could put on to the line. In the 1960s a lot of things started happening. People wanted to connect computers and oddball terminals over dialed-up phone connections to avoid the high cost of private lines. The phone company responded by developing a family of modems with telephones built in. This by the way was the origin of the RS-232 interface, a way for the phone company and the business machine manufacturers to agree on how they would connect to each other. Then there was the Carterfone decision - a legal battle ending in a court overturning the phone company's absolute ban on customers connecting to the switched network. At first the phone companies were allowed to demand that a "network protection device" supplied by them be inserted between the phone line and the customer equipment. These devices typically contained an isolation transformer, some varistors (level limiters), and a relay to control a DC bridge on the phone line to control off-hook/ on-hook signaling. Later court rulings allowed the customer to provide the network protection circuitry built into the equipment, so long as it met standards promulgated by the FCC. The general thrust of the standards is that an ordinary telephone needs no network protection device; after all the telephone companies didn't supply one with the phones they supplied. Something like a modem that is connected to the power line needs an isolation transformer with good insulation resistance and balance, so that even if lightning strikes the AC power line isn't likely to get connected to the phone line, and that sort of thing. Then there was the breakup of the Bell System, with one of the provisions being that the local telephone companies couldn't stay in the phone leasing business. A follow-on to this is that the phone wiring in your house is your own responsibility; the phone company provides service to a terminal point typically located on the exterior wall of your house and you take it from there. There was a while that you were supposed to notify the phone company of what kinds of things you had connected. The reason goes back to methods of testing telephone lines, manually and automatically - lots of phone offices these days automatically test all lines at night. With standard phones the ringer is in series with a capacitor, so when DC is applied to the line there is an initial surge of current as the capacitor charges, and another surge when the DC polarity is reversed and the capacitor charges the other way. In the old days the telephone repair people would do this testing watching a meter - if the meter kicks when polarity is reversed and then goes to zero all is well. If the meter doesn't go to zero then the line is shorted or grounded. If the meter doesn't kick then the line is open somewhere. I guess nowadays people plug and unplug phones so much and new-fangled ringers don't need a big capacitor anyway that the kick test is worthless and the companies have ceased to care that you tell them what you have connected. Unless you connect so many phones with so much capacitance that their ringing machine can't handle the load; but that's unlikely. > >Marginally related to that last: really, it wasn't long ago >that having a telephone that was mobile enough to be >unplugged and plugged back in SOMEWHERE ELSE was an extrava- >gance even on the psychological level. I have a vague >memory that, in some times and places (before WWI, Eastern >Europe?), it was not unusual for The Telephone in a house >to have its own room, that is, a cabinetwork arrangement >that would remind us of a telephone booth--that's inside >the house, right. Am I remembering something real, or was >this a dream? One thing you might be remembering - I've seen pictures of very old long-distance telephones that were built into a booth almost as big as a closet. Back before electron tube amplifiers were invented there was a limit to how far you could talk on the telephone because of signal losses in the wire; so to talk long distances you had to get into a very quiet place to hear and be heard. Even after electron tube amplifiers were invented they were bulky and expensive and required lots of maintenance, so the telephone companies didn't use them on circuits where they thought you could probably hear well enough without them. Also the old telephone transmitters and receivers were a lot less efficient than the modern ones - which says a modern telephone without electronics will talk farther than an old one could. Today of course you can get telephones with amplifiers built in; and electronics is so pervasive throughout the telephone network that you can't tell how far you are talking by how weak the sounds are. I'm not acquainted with any old homes, and certainly not any with telephone booths, but it seems like a reasonable thing one might do in building a house around the turn of the century when you had a little experience with how weak telephone sounds are, and if you have a bunch of noisy kids or live in a noisy neighborhood, or if you are installing the phone in a busy store or shop with machinery. Some of the very old 'long distance' telephone transmitters had to be mounted horizontally for best efficiency, so there were some very ornate built-into-a-desk telephones designed for this service. Being an expensive service it probably justified an expensive telephone anyway. -- haynes@cats.ucsc.edu haynes@cats.bitnet "Ya can talk all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was!" "No it aint! But ya gotta know the territory!" Meredith Willson: "The Music Man" From uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!EU.net!sun4nl!cwi.nl!dik Sun Dec 5 21:28:59 CST 1993 Article: 53814 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:53814 alt.dcom.telecom:4560 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,alt.dcom.telecom Path: uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!EU.net!sun4nl!cwi.nl!dik From: dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) Subject: Re: Numeric keypad ordering/Phone ordering Message-ID: Sender: news@cwi.nl (The Daily Dross) Nntp-Posting-Host: boring.cwi.nl Organization: CWI, Amsterdam References: <755011100.AA04200@Clone.his.com> Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1993 01:19:12 GMT Lines: 75 Status: R [cross posted to alt.dcom.telecom] Edward Rice quotes: > MG> From: pt93mg@pt.hk-r.se (Mats Grahm) > MG> Thats odd. I am aware of two different puls-encoding shcemes, but this > MG> seams to be a third. > MG> > MG> The normal code is one pulse for #1, two for #2 ..... ten for #0 But > MG> in Sweden, and I don't know wich other countries, the digits are > MG> shifted, so: One pulse for #0, two for #1, ... ten for #9. > There are indeed three different puls-encoding schemes. The normal one and the Swedish one (as shown above). And the third one used in New Zealand and Oslo (Norway) with 1 pulse for #0, 2 for #9 and downto 10 pulses for #1. Also the dials on rotary dial phones are shifted in those places. In article <755011100.AA04200@Clone.his.com> edward.rice@his.com (Edward Rice) writes: > Can anybody with one of these "oddball" (strictly by US standards!) encoding > systems tell me, does your country have area codes, and if so, in what order > are they arranged? Not really from an oddball (not strictly by US standards but by most) encoding system, but I can provide some insight. > > US area codes were designed so that the number of pulses necessary to signal > them would be minimized. The lowest (by pulse-count) area code is 212, New > York City, which is the busiest location. In order, our area codes start off > with 212, 213 & 312 (Los Angeles & Chicago), 214 & 412 & 313 (Dallas & > Pittsburgh & Detroit), and so on. Washington, DC was at the top of the second > tier, all those areas with a middle digit of zero (ten pulses), with 202. > This has never been a consideration in the Netherlands. The Dutch system (based on the German system of that time; I am talking early fifties) was a star-network. You dialled 0 for non-local access (equivalent to letter K for German Kennzahl at that time, German phones had A=1,B=2,C=3,D=4,E=5, F=6,G=7,H=8,I+J=9,K=0), followed by a two-digit major area indicator and two successive single-digit sub area indicators. The latter two were 0 if it was the major sub area. So, area code for Amsterdam: K2900, Rotterdam: K1800, The Hague: K1700. (Since about 1955 they are 020, 010 and 070 respectively, but you can still find 02908 close in the neighborhood of Amsterdam.) I see no real pulse minimization here; later changes only reduced the number of digits and in some cases increased the number of pulses, I think. And, rotary dial phones are still fairly common overhere; I have two; no tone. These star like dialling codes are much more common throughout the world than the random assignments used in Zone 1. Until I did understand the assignments I never really understood why 212 (NYC) was adjacent to 213 (LA). Of course, British area codea are also seemingly random, untill you try to assign letters to (part of) the area codes used in the UK. Than you will find the original layout was mostly mnemonic. Examples: Three digit area codes were originally: 021 (0B1) Birmingham 031 (0E1) Edinburgh 041 (0G1) Glasgow 051 (0L1) Liverpool 061 (0M1) Manchester and, some others, next to each other: 0481 (0GU1) Guernsey 0532 (0JE2) Jersey It is interesting to browse through old lists and guess how the numbers where derived. And while I am talking about it; letter assignments are not the same all over the world. Letters are abandoned nearly everywhere, except North America (although you still will find phones with letters in the UK and in France). Above I mentioned already the German system. Also the UK and French system, while looking similar to the North American system are sufficiently different to confuse people. In UK and France O and Q where assigned to digit 0, while North America assigns the O to digit 6 and has no assignment for Q. -- dik t. winter, cwi, kruislaan 413, 1098 sj amsterdam, nederland home: bovenover 215, 1025 jn amsterdam, nederland; e-mail: dik@cwi.nl From uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uunet!olivea!hal.com!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!lincmad Wed Dec 8 16:54:00 CST 1993 Article: 54036 of alt.folklore.computers Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uunet!olivea!hal.com!decwrl!netcomsv!netcom.com!lincmad From: lincmad@netcom.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Telephone dialing changes Message-ID: Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest) X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8] Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1993 10:35:28 GMT Lines: 67 Status: R A lot has been said recently about how we dial phone numbers in the US and elsewhere. A few clarifications are in order. Telephone numbering in the U.S., Canada, and certain of the Caribbean countries (those in U.S. area code 809) is governed by something called the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). Originally, the NANP specified that area codes would always have a 0 or 1 as the middle digit, plus the restriction that N00, N10, and N11 were not used (N represents any digit 2-9). The N00 codes were reserved for special purposes, like toll-free 800 numbers. N10 codes were used for telex services, some of which were carried through some of the same hardware as telephone traffic, although there were barriers to prevent calling from one system into the other. N11 codes were reserved for directory assistance, emergency services, and so on. The exchange code (the first three digits of the local number) was of the form NNX -- the first two digits were both in the range 2-9. Starting in 1973 in Los Angeles and New York, the lines began to blur. Exchange codes looking like area codes came into use. For example, 212-316-xxxx is a phone number in Manhattan. Starting in 1995, area codes will generalize to any three digits beginning with a 2-9, except for special reserved codes. (Telex services have already been moved out of the numbering space for telephones, allowing the use of N10 in TX/CA/MD/CA/PA/MI/NC, except that 710 is still reserved for special purposes.) As a result, it will no longer be possible ANYWHERE IN NORTH AMERICA to dial 1 + {7-digit number}, because it will be inherently ambiguous. The first two area codes to be assigned in 1995 are 334 in Alabama and 520 in Arizona. (Other states will follow alphabetically ;-P ) Thus, to dial a long-distance call in your own area code, you will dial either {only the 7-digit number} or {1 + AC + number}. The prefix '1' will ALWAYS mean 'area code follows.' (Whether or not it always means toll is a matter of local variation and heated discussion.) The reason you won't be able to dial {1 + 7-digit number} is that 1-334-xxxx and 1-334-xxx-xxxx will be ambiguous. If you currently dial {1 + number}, you will be forced to change by January 1, 1995. No exceptions, period. In some areas, you will change to {7 digits}; in others, to {1 + AC + 7d}. As for Britain and Ireland, Ireland has already changed to '00' for international calls. Also, the layout of Irish area codes is very logical. 01 is Dublin, 02 covers the southwest, 04 the area around Dublin, 05 the southeast, 06 the central west, 07 the northwest, and 09 the extreme northwest. Except for Dublin, 1 (or 2 ?) additional digits make up the area code. In Britain, as has been mentioned, the code for international calling will change to '00' in April 1995. In Denmark, there are no area codes; all numbers are eight digits, and you dial all eight digits from anywhere in Denmark. Norway is converting to the same system. The U.S. will not switch to '00' for international for two reasons. First, '00' is already in use for 'operator of my pre-subscribed long distance company.' Second, '00' for international doesn't allow for a distinction between direct-dialed and operator-assisted (011 and 01). The changes in the NANP are necessary because the old scheme just plain ran out of numbers. All area codes with [2-9][01][0-9] are in use, reserved, or planned for use in 1994, but there are other areas running out of local numbers. If you want to learn *even more* about the telephone system, check out comp.dcom.telecom or alt.dcom.telecom. -- Linc Madison * Oakland, California * LincMad@Netcom.com From kdq@emoryi.jpl.nasa.gov Tue Aug 22 13:32:07 CDT 1995 Article: 112081 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:112081 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!gw2.att.com!pacbell.com!nntp-hub2.barrnet.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!llyene!news From: kdq@emoryi.jpl.nasa.gov (Kevin D. Quitt) Subject: Re: Special codes of american phone system? Message-ID: <1995Aug21.223301.2338@llyene.jpl.nasa.gov> Sender: news@llyene.jpl.nasa.gov Reply-To: kdq@emoryi.jpl.nasa.gov Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory X-Newsreader: Forte Agent .99.82 References: <76417-808622712@mindlink.bc.ca> Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 22:30:30 GMT Lines: 41 Status: R hermit@cats.UCSC.EDU (William R. Ward) wrote: >In article <76417-808622712@mindlink.bc.ca>, Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca (Charlie Gibbs) writes: >) In article hermit@cats.UCSC.EDU >) (William R. Ward) writes: >)>Directory assistance used to be 555-1212 and in some areas it probably >)>still is. But it doesn't work here in 408 at least. You have to dial >)>411. If you dial 1-408-555-1212, however, it works fine, which is odd >)>IMHO. >) Not at all. 411 is local information, while 555-1212 is long distance >) information for whatever area code precedes it. You have to dial 1 for >) a long-distance call, and under the new North American numbering plan >) you can no longer omit the area code. The rule used to be that the >) second digit of an area code was always 0 or 1, while the second digit >) of an exchange was never 0 or 1. Now that we've run out of phone >) numbers, this rule has been eliminated - as a result you must now >) dial all 10 digits for any long-distance call, because there's no way >) for the central office switch to figure out whether you've omitted the >) area code or just haven't finished dialing yet. >How does your message contradict mine? I know all that about 0 and 1 >and dialing the area code and all that stuff. That's not what I'm >saying. >I'm saying it used to be that 555-1212 was the local number to dial to >get information. More recently they invented 411 (comtemporary with >911 and 611 methinks) as a shorter version, and now 555-1212 no longer >works. Youngsters. 411 used to be 114, and 611 was 116 ("When in a fix, dial one one six"). There was no 911 (or 119), you just called the operator. There were no area codes, there was long distance information. 555- was created along with area codes. I think GTE still allows any four digits, but Ma Bell requires 1212. At least around here. (Actually, 555 and wait-for-it still works some places). -- #include _ Kevin D Quitt USA 91351-4454 96.37% of all statistics are made up From jlaiho@ichaos.nullnet.fi Mon Apr 8 00:38:37 CDT 1996 Article: 138886 of alt.folklore.computers Xref: uchinews alt.folklore.computers:138886 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Path: uchinews!news.luc.edu!chi-news.cic.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in1.uu.net!EU.net!news.eunet.fi!nullnet!ichaos!jlaiho From: jlaiho@ichaos.nullnet.fi (Juha Laiho) Subject: Re: CP/M and Christensen? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Organization: NullNet r.y. Message-ID: References: <4k7dgh$m9i@news1.radix.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 19:03:14 GMT Lines: 247 Status: R johnl@Radix.Net (John Limpert) said: >Waed Christensen invented the XMODEM protocol. It used 128 byte >(plus overhead) packets because that was the standard block size >on an 8" CP/M floppy disk. All file sizes were a multiple of 128 bytes. >Ward Christensen and Randy Suess were responsible for CBBS, >an early computer bulletin board program written for CP/M. I'm not >sure if it was the first written for a microcomputer. This might clear things up a bit.. it seems that archiving miscellaneous messages is a good thing, after all.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsgroups: comp.bbs.misc Path: ichaos!nullnet!news.eunet.fi!news.funet.fi!sunic!pipex!uunet!ddsw1!chinet!randy From: randy@chinet.chinet.com (Randy Suess) Subject: The first BBS Message-ID: Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1993 01:34:50 GMT Lines: 218 There has been some discussion of who started the first bbs. Following is something Ward Christensen (ward@chinet.chinet.com) wrote for some magazine article, followed by a little information about the hardware used. ------------------------------------------------------ Overly-long item of my personal history, meeting Randy, the history of the XMODEM file transfer protocol, CBBS, and the reason you unscrew Oreo cookies. Graduated form College (1968) and went to work for IBM. Asked "Where are the computers". "We don't have any". Hmmm. Guess all the "iron" is out in the customers. Early 70's: got interested in having my "own" machine to program. Had "pinups" of 16-bitters on my walls. TI had a 980-A, which was a 16K (32K bytes I think) 16-bit machine with - gee golly - two 300 baud cassettes and a thermal printer, and a control panel right out of the Enterprise. $10K. Jan '74 went to couple hour class in NYC on "Large Scale Integration". Teacher held up 8008. Greedy Ward asked "Can you make a real computer out of one?". "Yep". "What do I need to know to understand it?" "TTL". "Huh?". Summer '74: bought TTL (Transistor-Transistor-Logic) books, old boards, started blowtorching chips off of boards, and hacking with them. Subscribed to "Experimenters Computer Systems" a mimeo-ed typewriter sheet type of newsletter. By Carl Helmers. Later became BYTE. Got plans for a cassette interface (to nothing special) from Don Tarbell. Began designing my own computer, and breadboarding pieces. Hardware random number generators and all that stuff - home-brew D-A converters so I could put my random numbers on the oscilloscope - x vs y - if I got "snow", it was a good random number generator. (Things were easier in those days!) (Why design my own? Because I became convinced the 8008 wasn't powerful enough to be the basis for a serious computer). '74: wrote letter to HeathKit. Told 'em they could start something big if they came out with a home computer kit - and I KNEW all the pieces were in place to make it happen. Answer came back "we have a computer - the Analog computer". They didn't catch on, didn't have a 'bit' (haha) of foresight. Finally was able to stop pretending I could actually design and get my own scratch-built computer working - fortunately, the Jan '75 issue of Pop. Electronics had the famous Altair 8080 on the cover, and I was hooked. Hesitated, then found ONE other guy - an IBMer in NYC, who had ordered one, so did so also ("oh well, at least there will be two of us). Bought a 16K machine; hacked a selectric terminal/typewriter interface (hit a key, see what comes out the wire by looking at the oscilloscope; program the micro in hand-assembled machine language, toggled in via the front panel, to generate a signal - hack until the computer generated signal matches the one that came out of the selectric - then hook 'em together. (A software UART for those of you who know what I mean - though I had no idea that was what I was doing). Hack a floppy disk interface together, too (I had found a strange but not too hard to interface "flying head floppy" in ComputerWorld). Met Randy prolly late '75 at Cache - I went to most meetings starting with the 2nd which was Sept '75. He and I worked with Tarbell cassette exchanges for a while - built-in assembler, editor, etc. Saved stuff to cassette by a speaker and microphone on a 300 baud acoustic coupler. Met Rob't Swartz - now of Mark Williams company fame - he had CP/M in '76. I bought a license in Jan '77 and took my diskette to his house. He showed me the CP/M editor and assembler and I wrote a program to "beep" the contents of my floppy to cassette via a modem. (the modem wouldn't generate the carrier without hearing another, and Bob happened to have a cassette of modem "stuff" around, so we played it into the modem to get it to generate the tone). Used 128 byte blocks and a checksum - the bare essentials for XMODEM though I didn't think of it as a protocol at the time. Sometime around there Randy also got CP/M, but HE got the "real thing" - IBM format 8" diskettes. I needed a way to swap stuff with Randy and others - so on late summer '77 wrote MODEM.ASM and tossed it into the CP/M users group. That program became the singly most modified program in computing history due to the many hardware environments in which it had to operate (no standards - no "IBM" to say where serial ports should be addressed, etc). Dave Jaffe wrote a routine "BYE" to allow remote users to call in to your CP/M system and operate it. I put up a 70K/diskette Northstar system with BYE and my modem program. Keith Peterson would call from Michigan and fill the diskette in one night or so. I got tired of that and took it down. Turns out that was - as others say - the first "remote CP/M system" since apparently Dave never put up a system for any length of time. Keith thought there should be an easier way to run MODEM than having to remember to use a "Q" option (Quiet - i.e. don't chatter about block numbers to the console) so he stripped MODEM down and called it XMODEM. Since that was a more "recognizable" name, that stuck as the protocol name. Others hacked MODEM/XMODEM to add CRC, multi-file transfer, etc. Chuck Forsberg wrote it in C, and for Unix -became RB and SB, YAM, etc. Chuck's 1K protocol as implemented in rb/sb needed a name, so I suggested he call it "Ymodem" which he did. He later wrote Zmodem, a protocol to send continuous blocks with asynch ACKs to allow max transfer throughput. ================ There was a group called PCNET mostly out of California who were doing a lot of talk on ARPANET about building a network of microcomputers. They were great at planning - something I've always been terrible at - but they weren't putting any HARDWARE/SOFTWARE together. I was frustrated by the lack of DOERS and lost interest. January 16, 1978 was a very snowy day. Couldn't get dug out, so called Randy. I had the CACHE message recorder phone line in my house, and Hayes had "invented" the hobbyist modem. I called Randy and talked about putting up my Vector machine (a 2nd S-100 box I'd bought to take around when asked to give talks on microcomputers) on the CACHE line as a way for people to call in with newsletter articles. Randy said "no" - "you're in the burbs, I'm in the city - we'll put it in my house - and forget the club, a committee project will never be done - just the two of us - you do the software I'll do the hardware. When will the software be ready?" heh heh. Without Randy's drive and ambition, it would never have seen the light of day. I prototyped a bit of a dialog in Basic, patterned after (1) the cork board bulletin board at CACHE meetings, and (2) the kind of BB you see at the Jewel - you know, garage for rent, dog grooming, etc. Began writing the real bulletin board program (Called CE.C by Randy - egotistically, the "Computer Elite's project C - Communications"). Randy put together the hardware. Very early in Feb, started testing. No one believed it could be written in 2 weeks of spare time so we called it "one month" and to this day declare Feb 16 as the birthday. ================ The PCNET people became very interested in CBBS - and they wanted a copy so they could start talking about PCNET by using CBBS (heh heh). Conversation with Dave Caulkins went like this: "I guess I'll charge $25 for CBBS - to keep people from bugging me (if it were free), yet making it cheap enough for anyone to buy". "No, that's crazy - charge at least $50". OK, so $50 it was. I was concerned about "conflict of interest", so let Randy get all the money (what, 200 sales or so, Randy?) He had after all put up all the money - all I'd put up was time. (Uh, I seem to recall from the Nov '78 BYTE article that I did buy a bit of the hardware also). That's about it. XMODEM was born of the necessity of transferring files mostly between Randy and myself, at some means faster than mailing cassettes (if we'd lived less than the 30 miles apart we did, XMODEM might not have been born). CBBS was born of the conditions "all the pieces are there, it is snowing like @#$%, lets hack". Hope you don't mind this long monologue. (I thought it was monolog, but my Word Finder Plus screen checker said monologue). ================ Unscrew Oreo Cookies because - well if you don't know then you haven't done it. ---------------------------------------------------- The original CBBS consisted of a S-100 motherboard picked up at some fleamarket that I had to solder all the connectors. (lotsa soldering done in those days, such as 8 k memory boards filled with 1kX1 chips) It was mounted on a BUD chassis with a single density 8 inch floppy drive. On the motherboard was some 8080 cpu (upgraded to a Z80) a Hayes 300 baud modem card, a 3P+S board with the parallel port used for control signals, a Processor Technology VDM video display card, and an 8k memory board. There was also a card with 8 1702 EEPROMS that held the CP/M BIOS, video display drivers, and debug code, all written by Ward. I had a EPROM burner, and Ward made sure all the BIOS variables and experimentor stuff ended up in the last 1702. Musta re-programmed that thing 10 times a week for a few months. The floppy drives of that time had 117vAC running the spindle motor, and the drive would wear out quickly. So I built a circuit on a prototype board that would turn on the system power when a ring signal came in from the modem card and do a reset of the computer. By the time the drive spun up, the software had answered the phone and booted CPM and CBBS from the floppy. (simple power fail system!) The circuit board also had some 555 timers, so when the caller went away, the drive motors would continue to spin for about 10 seconds to flush out any data, then shut the system down. I had an old Heath chart recorder I hooked across the floppy drive motor and set up the chart speed for 2 days per sheet. Was able to determine the calling patterns from the chart. From the 173k single density single sided floppy, we went to a pair of them, then to double density double sided drives. Bout a year later, moved CBBS to a NorthStar Horizon cabinet with a 10 meg seagate hd. Both those systems are still sitting around someplace. It is now running on a PC klone motherbard still running CP/M with the original 8080 assembly code! The klone board has a V20 chip, which fully supports the 8080 op codes. Ward wrote a wrapper around CP/M-CBBS, and CBBS has been running that way for over 10 years. -- They stand on a wall, and say: "Nothing is gonna hurt you tonite. Not on my watch" Randy Suess randy@chinet.chinet.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Wolf a.k.a. Juha Laiho Espoo, Finland (GEEK CODE 3.0) GIT d- s+: a- C++ UH++++$ UL++++ P- L+++ E--- W+ N+++ !K w !O !M V PS(+) PE Y+ !PGP t- 5? X? R tv- b+ DI? D+ G e+ h!>--- r++ y+ "...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)