HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (08/13/83)
From: Charles Hedrick <HEDRICK@RUTGERS.ARPA> It is interesting to see all of this discussion of transporters as if they were purely fictional devices. A group of us have concluded that transporter technology is in day to day use in the U.S. by the phone company. It all started from a discussion of the phone strike. A lot of my friends are being drafted. New Jersey, as you probably know, is the capital of AT&T. I have yet to find somebody who didn't have a husband, wife, or close friend working for some branch of AT&T. Well, these people are coming in to work and finding airline tickets on their desk. With attached notes: "Congratulations. You are now running a Phone Store in Nome, Alaska." (So far the draft powers seem to be limited to people working for a division of AT&T. However since the Rutgers computer science dept. is largely an adult education subsidiary of AT&T, a number of us are expecting to find such things on our desks in the near future.) As you may imagine, there is a certain amount of maneuvering to get the best jobs. This led us to consider what the worst possible job would be. I claimed it would be collecting money from pay phones in Harlem. But them it struck us: Does anyone really collect money from pay phones? Our computer center is located in a building that has activity at all hours. Our hackers come and go at all possible times. It is not unusual to see somebody loading coffee into the coffee machine as we leave the building at 7am. We have also seen people working on cigarette machines, elevators, and every other piece of equipment in the building. But despite the fact that we cover the building at all hours, we have never seen anyone collecting money from a pay phone. I don't know how long AT&T intended to keep this technology secret, but we have finally caught them: Inside each telephone's coin box is a small transporter. Our theory is that they were attempting to keep it secret for the next 5 years, so that they would not have to give it free of charge to all the Operating Companies. Well, the sleuths at Rutgers have found them out. I hope this discovery will go down in history beside the discovery of the IGPU. (As you may recall, the IGPU was also discovered by indirect means, when someone realized that the amount of time to deliver a letter went down as the distance went up. This, of course, implied that delivery to other solar systems would be essentially instantaneous.) -------