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Where Are The Founders Of The Dial-Up Revolution?
RIMBoy writes "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently tracked down the founders behind the dial-up modem revolution. The founders of Hayes Micromodem set the standard with their AT Command set. While Dennis Hayes finds himself inducted into the Computer Industry Hall of Fame, at the same time he is broke (with a stop as a bar owner) and trying to find the next big thing. Dale Heatherington cashed out early and has dedicated himself to several projects, including ham radio."
Certainly, hooking up on a modem was one of the things that made my computer cool compared to other people that didn't have one. Those were the days when you would dial up some BB and hear EEEEE aaaaaa iiiii shhhhhh oooo bong bong bing (you get the point....)
I remember cruising along with my 1200 baud modem why others were stuck with 300 baud! Too bad that these guys are now out in the cold (figuratively speaking, though maybe for some, literally) because it was modems that people used to first connect to the internet, not DSL or cable. Modems unfortunately will become nothing more than a tale that we can tell our grandkids about many years from now.
"Back in my day, we didn't have these fancy wireless petabit connections. We had to use 300 baud modems over the telephone (uphill, both ways by the way!) and we liked it!"
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Just look at:
1. Hayes: Dennis Hayes stays with company, guy who did the technical work, Dale Heatherington, leaves
2. Microsoft: Bill Gates stays with company, guy who did the techincal work, Paul Allen, leaves
3. Apple: Steve Jobs stays with the company, guy who did the techincal work, Steve Wozniak, leaves
So seems like techies have all the fun: start a company, keep a low profile, get rich, and then quit. That way the techie gets to spend the rest of their lives with enough money to just hack!
Sweet.
The story was meant to be a sad reflection on Hayes-the-man, ended up making me feel good about being a geek.
John.
Having been in this business since about the same time as Hayes, Katz and others you obviously have no idea what the difference between a acoustic coupler modem to, 300 baud, to 1200 baud, to 2400 baud and what we have now meant. Hayes was the standard after acoustic coupler. It defined everything up to 19.2k. When their designed reached the speed where I could not type fast enough to keep up, they changed the world.
Don't think about the web, think about your keystrokes think about those who saw they could send much more then just text for the first time.
(Never mind sending a 1 meg file for 60 minutes).
Tower
Everybody who knows Hayes remembers Ward Christensen's Xmodem file transfer protocol.
This was Ward in 1980. I wonder where he is now?I know people like to gloss over this stuff but it needs to be restated.
Gates and Jobs were both programmers in their own right. Just because they didn't STICK with the hardcore tech side doesn't mean they were never there to begin with.
Gates coded early versions of Basic software/DOS and Jobs coded Atari games and helped manufacture the first Apple's.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Sure dial 1200 or 2400 is up is slow, but back then we made good use of the stuff, mainly by doing direct host dial up rather than IP (not that there were a lot of ISPs back then). First up, no IP wrapper overheads. Second, you used text terminals - no graphics. Real work was more than just a theoretical possibility.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I didn't have a computer (yet), but it was a joy to type the appropriate AT commands from my MIME I video terminal (complete with lower case character set!) instead of having to dial the phone.
Before I had a real computer (a homebrew SWTPC 6809-based clone running Flex), and WAY before I had an IBM PC clone, I built a 6809-based SBC with 4K EPROM, 2K RAM (IIRC, it may have been more, but not much), and three serial ports. I wrote a monitor program for it so I could enter code, in hex, by hand (later, I would write a cross-assembler on Concordia University's CYBER 835 mainframe in Pascal, that spewed out S1S9 records that the monitor could read).
One of the first programs (hand assembled at the time), was a "RAM-dialer": it would control the Hayes Smartmodem to repeatedly dial one of a set of numbers until it got a data connection -- see in those days most BBSes had one phone line. Bliss!
Ah, the nostalgia of the early to mid 1980s.
You could've hired me.
I think there's a LOT to be learned from analyzing this combination of personalities.
While it's true that the techies seem to "have all the fun" in these scenarios - it's also equally true that the techies needed the business-oriented/business-building personalities of their partners, in order to get themselves into a situation where their contributions became valuable enough to allow them to leave with a big "wad of cash".
Really, after reading the Hayes/Heatherton article, it appeared to me that Hayes' biggest reason for eventual disaster was a lack of any inventive/R&D motivated people working for him after Heatherton bailed out. Certainly, Hayes achieved all the brand name recognition and marketplace respect a tech. company could ever want. Properly run, his company could have been building, say, the #1 most popular DSL and/or cable modems used today.
I think Apple Computer thrives for exactly this reason. Steve Jobs is acutely aware that his company has to innovate -- never imitate. He may not be the mastermind behind any of the ideas, but he hires the types of people who can create cool looking and working devices/software.
The trick is, if you're going to be a "Hayes", keep hiring new "Heathertons" as your earlier ones get burnt out or want to move on.
The Dial-Up Revolution?
The AJC reporter writes about Hayes and Heatherington, "making it easier for millions of people around the world to connect to the Internet." Perhaps the reporter didn't know there was anything before the 'net.
With all deference and due respect to their accomplishment, if we frame the discussion as a "Revolution"... "around the world", then Hayes and Heatherington did build the revolutionary weapon, but the trigger was squeezed by a fellow named Tom Jennings and a few of his friends. That was the shot heard 'round the world.
Hey! How many here can tell us their nodelisting? Hands?
Cheers!
Reports of my deaf have been greatly exaggerated.