syd@dsinc.dsi.com (Syd Weinstein) (10/13/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0436m01@vector.dallas.tx.us> Larry Lippman writes: > I would be most curious to know if any other Telecom readers >have ever managed to lay their hands on any surplus Picturephone >apparatus. I have known a few Bell Labs employees who were ham radio >operators and had real motivation to obtain surplus Picturephone >apparatus for amateur television purposes - but even they were >unsuccessful in their efforts. Last time I saw real picturephone station equipment was in the basement of a friend of mine whos father worked at Bell Labs and his father had req'd the stuff for an experiment. That was over fifteen years ago. (It was the second generation picture phone equipment). >[Moderator's Note: When I said '*the* picturephone center' I did not mean >there was only one everywhere; I meant only one in Chicago. For a few years >in the early seventies, there were maybe a couple dozen customers with >picturephone service here. IBT had a little booth set up in the lobby where >the public could go to call the relatively few people who had the service; >mostly businesses used the service to display their wares. PT] What I do remember was the Bell Picturephone demonstration centers in major cities. Ours in Philadelphia was in the Franklin Institute a local science museum. There were two booths with first generation picturephones and a common phone outside, and two repeater monitors above the booths. The phones were sort of standard touch tone phones with ten buttons as normal (no * or # yet), but they also had an 11'th button, a P where the # is now. You pushed the P to make a picture call as the first digit. The two booths only talked to each other, but the common phone on the display was able to call about ten other demo centers, including Chicago and Wash. DC. I was hooked to the repeater monitors above the booths. It was all rather impressive for the early 1960's. At that time, it was expected that if you wanted to make a picture phone call, you would just dial P then the number, else 1 then the number for voice only. I don't know if the 1960's picturephone was 6MHz or 1Mhz like the version 2 system. In version 1, the camera was not directable down to a piece of paper, that was a later idea. All in all, the picture was very acceptable, little long distance noise at all, even on calls to Chicago. ===================================================================== Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP Elm Coordinator Datacomp Systems, Inc. Voice: (215) 947-9900 syd@DSI.COM or {bpa,vu-vlsi}!dsinc!syd FAX: (215) 938-0235