Jerry Leichter (LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU) <leichter@lrw.com> (08/14/90)
The Lady With the Torch Wants Your 2 Cents Worth (and $15) Got $15 spare and an opinion on the meaning of liberty? Now, you can record it in a data bank in the Statue of Liberty. The money will go toward improving the historical museum in the statue's pedestal. A key supporter of the museum, George M. White, Architect of the U.S. Capitol, set up the fund-raising effort with help from American Telephone and Telegraph Co. Contributors can dial 1 800 LADYLIB, and an operator will take their donations via credit card and type their statements into a computer. The messages will be stored on an AT&T machine in the museum and visitors will be able to read them one by one or find messages by entering the donors' names and hometowns. The first contributor, AT&T Chairman Robert E. Allen, wrote "Liberty is coming of age in the Age of Information." [From Business Week, August 6, 1990. Page 70A. That page is Business Week's "Information Processing" column; they also have a "Developments to Watch" column. Both columns often contain articles of interest of TELECOM readers. For example, the August 6th "IP" column has articles about Chevron's replace- ment of ship-to-shore telex to its oil tankers with a PC-based Email system, and about a $60 device to connect your phone to your PC and use Caller-ID to look up the name of your caller; while the "DTW" column has articles on a "RobotOperator" which provides access to a database keyed off of Caller-ID, and about a new chipset for "smart TV's" that contains enough power to do all sorts of fancy processing - so you'll be able to by ROM chips with programming for new options. A bigger haul than most weeks, but a quick survey shows that there is usually at least one telecom-related article per issue.] Jerry