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Pictorial and Written History of Bell Systems
gngulrajani writes "I have wasted an afternoon digging though this website. Lots of old school Bell marketing posters as well as technical specifications for things such as 'Telephone Memory Devices' and a 'dataphone service'."
Phone Loosers
It's not exactly slashdotted... The index page has been changed, but the "deep links" still work... Desperate for this site? Google-cache the base page here and follow the links to the real site. (Until they decide they don't like that either...)
I week or two ago I found this Video from the Bell System's Pavilion at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962. It's fairly interesting and amusing. It shows such advances as touch-tone dialing, pagers, and autodialing. Bah! I forgot to turn on HTML! Prelinger Archive Video - Film for the World's Fair Bell Systems Pavilion, Century 21 Calling
The novation applecat was the most amazing chunk of hardware you could add to an apple in those days.
You are not kidding. Those things were fully programable so that one could create a list of numbers to dial (or even dial randomly) and then log the numbers which were answered by computer modems for call back and investigation when you got back from school. I could not afford the Applecat at first and relyed on a cheap modem card and one of those phone handset cradles for a while before I could mow enough lawns around the neighborhood to purchase the Applecat. As I recall, it seems to have pulled about $300 out of my 14year old pockets, but there was a friend of mine (from a decidedly wealthy background) that was doing all sorts of custom programming on his even hooking up an old cassette player to function as an anwering machine which totally blew me away.
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Well the biggest hidden secret fact is that Alexander Graham Bell did not actually invent the telephone. As was finally recognised by the US Congress in 2002, the inventor was a poor Italian immigrant Antonio Meucci.
Meucci had taken a 'one year renewable intent to patent' out on the invention as he couldn't afford the full patent, and a few years later Bell, who had access to Meucci's materials got hold of the stuff and claimed it as his own.
from the article:He sent a model and technical details to the Western Union telegraph company but failed to win a meeting with executives. When he asked for his materials to be returned, in 1874, he was told they had been lost. Two years later Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci, filed a patent for a telephone, became a celebrity and made a lucrative deal with Western Union.
Meucci sued and was nearing victory - the supreme court agreed to hear the case and fraud charges were initiated against Bell - when the Florentine died in 1889. The legal action died with him.
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