larry@uunet.uu.net (Larry Lippman) (07/15/90)
In article <9482@accuvax.nwu.edu> roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) writes: > When were the first touchtone phones installed? I always > thought the answer was that were introduced at the 1964/65 New York > World's Fair. The fair opened in the summer of 64, so those were > probably installed in late 63 or early 64. Touch-Tone dialing was officially introduced by the Bell System in 1963. The first paper on it appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal in 1960, followed by a few years of little comment, followed by a number of papers in 1963 including a series in IEEE Transactions. > A touch-tone phone was clearly visible in > President Kennedy's oval office in numerous bits of footage shot at > the time. ... > Was touch-tone in general use in May 1963, or did the President just > have a pre-release model? I suspect that the Touch-Tone telephone you saw in Kennedy's office was for an AUTOVON circuit, which was already being installed at that time. The use of Touch-Tone to provide the 4 special function keys needed for call precedence control was essential to the operation of AUTOVON. Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp. "Have you hugged your cat today?" {boulder||decvax||rutgers||watmath}!acsu.buffalo.edu!kitty!larry VOICE: 716/688-1231 || FAX: 716/741-9635 {utzoo||uunet}!/ \aerion!larry