matt_mcgehrin@pro-sherwood.cts.com (Matthew McGehrin) (11/05/90)
In-Reply-To: message from sba8_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
I have to find the number, but I remeber calling a system in
Morristown, NJ. It was a NJ Bell Lab. It was really interesting.
Depending on which number you called you could make the system do the
following:
Give you a wake up call (you enter in your phone number and the time
in 24 hr format and at the time it would call your house, wait till
you picked up and in a computer voice say ' NJ BELL WAKE up call'
(click)
Another feature was they had a recording that would say 'Yes (pause
pause) Yes operator I will accept the charges. It was nice since when
ever you didn't have any money you would do a third party to that
number and three out five times it worked, since most of the operators
didnt give a hoot.
Also they had a 'directory' of employee's at the lab. You could press
numbers (via a TT pad), and it would tell you the names that
correspond. Then if their number was listed it would tell you their
street adddress, telephone number and you had the option of dialing
out.
Oh Yeah, also you could find out the temperture in the room, see if
people had mail in their voice mailboxes, play some music (computer
generated) or listen to the radio. They had it tuned to (102.7 WNEW
FM). I hope they do not get scared by all the information I just left.
It was a great system that could be used in the real world.
Matthew
ProLine : matt_mcgehrin@pro-sherwood
Internet: matt_mcgehrin@pro-sherwood.cts.com
UUCP: crash!pro-sherwood!matt_mcgehrin
ARPA: crash!pro-sherwood!matt_mcgehrin@nosc.mil
[Moderator's Note: Thank you for *NOT* including the phone number
involved. I'd have really had to edit it out ... I can't condone
the kind of tampering around you were doing. I agree though it seems
like an interesting device which you were playing with. Too bad it was
not available for general use. PAT]chapman@alc.com (Brent Chapman) (11/07/90)
In <14343@accuvax.nwu.edu> matt_mcgehrin@pro-sherwood.cts.com (Matthew McGehrin) writes: >In-Reply-To: message from sba8_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu >I have to find the number, but I remeber calling a system in >Morristown, NJ. It was a NJ Bell Lab. It was really interesting. >Depending on which number you called you could make the system do the >following: (examples deleted) Are you sure this was NJ Bell, and not BellCore? A few years ago, some of the researchers at BellCore (can't recall their names at the moment) started experimenting with using a UNIX system to drive a phone switch that was controlled by commands sent over an RS-232 serial port. I seem to recall that the work was described in some detail in a paper given at one of the USENIX conferences a few years ago. The switch, if I recall correctly, had a trunk (DID?) interface on one side and lots (40 or so?) of individual lines on the other. Most of the lines had just normal touch tone phone sets attached to them, but many had things like voice syntesizers, recorders, radios, and so on attached. They created a scripting language for controlling the switch, so that they could associate different actions with calls to different numbers. When a call came in on a certain number, the computer would find and execute "program" for that number. The program could then do something like grab a free voice synthesizer, connect that to the circuit the call was coming in on, and then have the voice synthesizer say whatever they wanted it to. Since the voice synthesizer had a touchtone decoder, they could recognize TT input from the caller, and the program couliWd respond accordingly. The voice synthesizers they were using were fairly featureful, and could do things like vary the tone of their output, to produce (for instance) either a deep, masculine voice, a warm, feminine voice, or a squeeky little child's voice. One of the researchers used this feature to create what they called the "touch tone shell". Basically, you'd call up the number for this service, and it would connect you to a UNIX system, with the voice synthesizer "reading" the output which would normally be on the screen. If I recall correctly, stdin was read back in the masculine voice, stdout in the feminine voice, and stderr in the squeeky child's voice. You could use two-digit codes on the keypad to enter whatever characters you wanted as input, to control the system. I wish I could remember more about the system. It was absolutely fascinating to read about, and wish for. Hopefully someone who knows more about it will read this, and can provide pointers to the original articles and papers describing the system. Brent Chapman Ascent Logic Corporation Computer Operations Manager 180 Rose Orchard Way, Suite 200 chapman@alc.com San Jose, CA 95134 Phone: 408/943-0630