TELECOM@Usc-Eclb (11/05/82)
TELECOM AM Digest Friday, 4 November 1982 Volume 2 : Issue 129
Today's Topics:
Generic Dialer & TeleMail & 1-NXX & Buying a Phone
& TWX & Complication of LD Access & Switching Trivia
Operator Codes And State Boundaries
TELECOM Digest V2 #128, CH1820
TELENET
TWX History
Queries About DTMF Chips
Building An AutoDialer
Demon-Dialer
Area Codes, N0X & N1X Prefixes
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Date: 29 October 1982 12:31-EDT
From: Jeffrey R. Del Papa <DP at MIT-ML>
generic dialer:
I recently heard (from the director of the gte group that sells
pbx'n, who was filling in for the instructor of this telephony class I
started taking tuesday) that "10 digit dialing is coming... tho not
till after the dust from the consent decree settles a bit"
telemail:
is a crock. it's user interface is worse than any mailer I have
seen. We showed some of the telenet people (Gulp, I will have to
admit, I work for GTE, tho I have nothing to do with the telephone
groups.) RMAIL, and BABYL. There reaction was "too complex.." (I was
rather incredulous at the idea that rmail was complex) (of course
these same people were suprized at the idea of someone using a mail
system. very few people (at the labs anyway) use electronic mail, and
those that do use it mostly as a novelty.) (by the same token the only
people at honeywell that use multics emacs are consultants. all the
real employees us the line editors.)
Telemail is organized in an almost reasonable way... It has a front
end running on a number of vaxen, and file storage done by a tandem.
this leaves more than a few warts tho. you can file messages away, and
delete the messages from the files. you cannot (once they have been
created) delete the file. so after a few years, you wind up with a
directory full of empty files. At least there is hope by some people
in the telent group of providing a different mailer interface.
dial 1+nxx:
the theory I most often hear concerning 1+ dialing, besides the
ovbious routing switch simplification, is that it reduces ths
proablility of small children to direct dial the other side of the
world. with 1+ the chance is down to 10% with the 0 or 1 requirement
for the second area code digit means it now is a 2% chance.
buying a phone:
Supposedly the guts of a modern telephone are worth $22 retail
(actual cost of about $4, tho that may be for gte phones) The GTE flip
fone was known to it's developers as the "disposaphone" originaly
designed to sell for ~$10 and disposed of when broken. when the
manufacturing people got through costing the thing it had to cost $18.
the marketing people said "we can't do that", so the sell the phone
for ~$50, and fix them when they break.
complication of ld access:
The 10xx for ld acess may happen because the nice people at
MCI,SPC,ITT,etc.. are going to do there best to see that mother
doesn't get the code 1 for ld access when they are stuck with 547.
switching trivia:
The digest already carried the history of the strowger (step by
step) switch. Bell hates patents it doesn't own. It developed panel to
avoid paying ericson for crossbar. well, it didn't even use step until
the twenties, staying with manual switching, to avoid the strowger
patent. In 1919 they did this study. if every female born that year
became a telephone operator when she turned 18, it would provide some
40% of the projected need.
enjoy,
Jeff
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Date: 29 Oct 1982 2057-EDT
From: John R. Covert <RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: Buying telephones
$50 is not an unreasonable price for a Western Electric Standard
Touch- Tone set. The wholesale price for Stromberg or ITT equivalent
set is around $37 (depending on cord lengths, etc.).
But if I were you, just before calling them to buy the phone, I'd go
by the Phone Center Store and exchange the set for a new one. (Tell
them you don't like the color, or that it sometimes doesn't dial
right, or something.) At $50 they can afford to sell you a new phone.
And what are they going to do about all the "Bell System Property, Not
For Sale" stamps in the sets?
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Date: 29 Oct 1982 2130-EDT
From: John R. Covert <RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO>
cc: lauren at UCLA-SECURITY
Subject: TWX
>From "Events in Telephone History:"
November 21, 1931 -- Inauguration of teletypewriter exchange service,
TWX, by A.T.&T. Company. Teletypewriters had been in use on
private lines since 1915. The new service established central
switching exchanges through which any subscriber could commun-
icate by teletypewriter with any of the other subscribers to
the network.
August 31, 1962 -- Bell System's Teletypewriter Exchange Service cut
from manual to dial operation on a nationwide basis.
December 1, 1962 -- TWX service at speeds up to 100 wpm introduced.
January 15, 1969 -- AT&T agreed to sell its teletypewriter exchange
service to the Western Union Telegraph Company.
July 28, 1970 -- The FCC gave final approval to WU Corp's acquisition
of the TWX service operated by AT&T and several independent
companies. The TWX sale doesn't include AT&T's private line
teletypewriter service or the teletypewriter machines used by
AT&T's DataPhone customers. The transfer was scheduled to
take effect March 31, 1971.
The term TWX is used like "Kleenex" to mean any hard-copy electronic
message. It certainly was a common term in the military during the
Korean War, and it is still a common term used within Digital for any
message sent over the company's internal, private, hard-copy message
system.
It was in use even when AT&T's offering of the service was on Baudot
machines. The ASCII machines were assigned telephone numbers in the
N10 NPAs; the Baudot machines had numbers with regular NPAs. It was
possible to communicate between the two types of machines because the
network sent calls that transited the two sets of NPAs through a speed
and code converter. Model 33s on DataPhone service could not commun-
icate with TWX at all, since they would not go through the converter
if calling a Baudot machine (same NPA set) and would go through the
converter if calling a 33 on TWX service.
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Date: 29 Oct 1982 at 2006-CDT
From: mtbill@UTEXAS-11
Subject: a little TWX history
To: vortex!lauren@lbl-unix
You have probly been getting many msgs in response to your
query on this topic, but let me add a few lines, and maybe I can help.
If you could edit the responses you receive, you might prepare a
'History of TWX' for export over the network.
TWX was a commercial offering that appeared in the early '60s
from AT&T. TWX was made possible by the development of the 33 and 35
model Teletypes, and the agreement on a standard communication code,
viz., ASCII. A separate dialing plan using the area codes 510, 610,
710, 810 and 910 was set up in the US and Canada allowing switched
message traffic between TWX customers at 110 baud, a noticeable
improvement over the 50 or 60 baud of Telex. The FCC ordered AT&T to
transfer TWX to Western Union in the late 60s (something to do with
the 1956 Consent Decree perhaps?) and the transfer was complete in
1972. However, many customers were still being served on Bell
facilities until as late as 1980, when WU finally consolidated TWX
onto its own switching network, at which time they dubbed the service
Telex II. Before the migration occurred, translation of many TWX
numbers to regular 10 digit phone numbers was possible, which allowed
all kinds of mischief. But, those happy days are over.
As for your note on Klinger's alleged TWX message... It is
entirely possible that the military was using the acronym TWX before
AT&T, but I can't confirm this supposition. You need not be concerned
that Klinger was not on mainland US, since DoD used Bell's
trans-oceanic cables for their communications, and installed plenty of
outside plant in Korea during the war, just as they did in Viet Nam.
Whether or not Klinger's TWX came in at 60 or 100 baud is debatable,
but you can assume it was carried in Baudot form. The speed of the
terminal equipment was modified in the field by Army types, just as
they did during WWII. The Navy is on record for rebuilding old TTY's
to do in excess of 100 baud, which also required more frequent main-
tenance. But TTY's are like old Mustangs: once they wear out you
simply rebuild it and proceed to run the crap out of it.
Another intereting historical note on TTY traffic... during
the Viet Nam fiasco DoD began to use satellite circuits for data
traffic, becuz of the shortage of cable facilities. Nobody ex- pected
problems they had trying to rewrite all their communications software
to handle the propogation delays up to the bird and back.
Oh well, TWX or Telex II...a rather interesting and sordid
history indeed. Good luck with your research on this topic.
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Date: 29 Oct 1982 2152-EDT
From: John R. Covert <RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO>
cc: cmoore at BRL
Subject: Operator codes and state boundaries
I really don't see what a state boundary or NPA has to do with where
the operators are who serve a particular exchange. What seems to be
important is how the network is trunked. NPAs and state boundaries
should not restrict the operation of a single operating company. If
N.E.T. wants to put the inward operators for Wilson's Mills, Maine in
Montpelier, Vermont, why not. You might not have noticed without
looking at a map, but all of the northern part of New Hampshire which
separates that part of Maine from Vermont is also served out of Mont-
pelier (it's only 30 miles wide). Likewise, all of coastal New Hamp-
shire is served out of Lawrence, Mass, so it's not so strange that
some of southern Maine is, too. And by the way, the inward operators
for Lawrence, Mass, are actually in several different locations, both
in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Operators used to be sort of local to your exchange. Not any more.
They can be located anywhere. Inward used to really be able to do
something about putting calls through. Now all they can do is some-
times bypass a translation error in your local toll system.
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Date: 29 October 1982 22:01-EDT
From: Ken Harrenstien <KLH at MIT-MC>
Subject: TELECOM Digest V2 #128, CH1820
To: RSX-DEV at DEC-MARLBORO
If the CH1820 is unacceptable for the reasons you have given,
could you please explain what the "right" things to do might be?
I have looked into this to some extent (a means of properly
diagnosing the audio feedback on a phone would be a very useful thing
for deaf users) and just don't see how it is possible to win for every
case. At least this chip sounds like someone is finally trying to do
the job. I would certainly want to use it unless something better
exists, and it's not clear that anything does, or that anything better
can be constructed.
Would appreciate more comments and info...
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Date: Fri Oct 29 1982 15:20:12 PDT
From: Lauren Weinstein <vortex!lauren@LBL-UNIX>
Subject: Telenet
Well, I guess it all depends on where you are and what you're doing.
I've seen no service variations in Telenet since the GTE takeover, and
still find them to be highly superior to such competitors as Tymnet.
--Lauren--
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Date: Fri Oct 29 1982 20:09:01 PDT
From: Lauren Weinstein <vortex!lauren@LBL-UNIX>
Subject: TWX history
Well, the truth begins to emerge. It does indeed appear that "TWX" is
a generic term stretching all the way back to the early days of
teletypewriter communications. Particularly in the military, the term
"twix" has been used without regard for the actual technology (i.e.
Baudot 3-row vs. ASCII 4-row) in use. More strict adherence to use of
the term "telex" for Baudot TTY systems appears to be mainly
restricted to the commercial environment. Even here, however, there
is some confusion, since some people use the term "telex" to mean a
commercial "cablegram" communication.
I should have known better than to doubt Klinger.
Thanks to all who responded directly to me and to the list.
--Lauren--
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Date: 27-SEP-1982 09:17
From: "EVE::VACON c/o" <Schriesheim at DEC-Marlboro>
Subject: Question about DTMF CHIPS
We have had considerable success with a number of "standard" parts for
DTMF (TOUCHTONE) generation and detection from AMI. I would suggest
than if someone wanted to design their own that they get the
"telecommunications design manual" from AMI. AMI's phone is
(408)246-0330. There are alos many standard parts for repertory
dialer design in this book.
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Date: 31 Oct 82 23:59:11-EST (Sun)
From: J C Pistritto <jcp@BRL>
Subject: Autodialer Construction
I'm building an auto-dialer, based on a Z80 micro. I would
like to be fairly intelligent about dialing, (ie. either pulse or
tone), detecting secondary dial-tones, (for use with SPRINT/MCI
services). I also would like to be able to use it to link my two
phone lines, (ie. place calls for me when I'm not at home and connect
me to the line after it answered).
Remote operation would work as follows:
I dial my home phone, wait for it to answer, and dial an
access code (tone only), then the number. It then picks up the second
line, dials the number, waits for answer, and then connects that line
to the first line.
1) I assume this is possible, if not, please let me know
before I spend a lot of time on it.
2) What are some good parts/techniques to do this. I would
like to do it on a reasonably small (1 Multibus slot) type card, with
parts that I can get fairly easily, (and are likely to be in
production for a while).
3) Other than the obvious problem with connecting something
non-FCC registered to the phone line, and with the possibility of
evading tariffs using the remote dialing feature, are there any
notable legal hassels involved.
-JCP-
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Date: Sat Oct 30 17:53:56 1982
Subject: demon-dialer
I tried one. When you lift the phone & punch a special command key it
hangs up the line until the command is complete and then dials the
number. What I didn't like, (I tried it for 30 days and returned it)
was in using the auto-redial feature you left the phone off the hook.
Then if you got an incoming call it would beep in the headset.
Requires you to be close to the handset at all times. It is also
overpriced and there are not many discounts to it. $100 would be
better than $200 for it.
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Date: 2 Nov 82 11:46:46-EST (Tue)
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@BRL>
cc: cmoore at BRL
Subject: area codes, N0X & N1X
At what time on Nov. 6 will 619 area be set up in southern Calif.? Is
it a new idea to have transition period? (i.e. can still use 714 for a
while to reach 619)
July 1982 Chicago directory, which has note about 1+ becoming
necessary on out-of-area direct-dial in October, says to dial
0+312+number for 0+ calls within 312 area. (I'd also like to check on
local service from some southern suburbs into 219 area, Ind.)
Proposed NYC split into 2 areas (212,718) would be less than 4 years
after it got N0X and N1X, which are found in 4 of 5 boroughs (NOT
Staten Island, if I recall my V&H notes OK).
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End of TELECOM Digest
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