On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:02:57 -0800 (PST), HAncock4 wrote, en passant:
Yup: I still have a desk-set of that sort (ivory color, l500D of 5-66).
Cheers, -- tlvp
- - Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Good point: I remember using some of those sets. I'd /really/ like to know why the "Asterisk" (or is it "Star"?) and Octothorpe keys were added, and when. They were used for "Class" services, of course, but were also important for IVR systems, so that date might be a good anchor point for the introduction of IVR technology.
Here in Providence, RI we still have one delivery outfit, Munroe Dairy. I remember getting a tour of the facility they use when I as a kid and was suprised to see they still do deliveries.
The product mix is interesting too!
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***** Moderator's Note *****
I called the dairy, and talked to Lindsay Armstrong-Mitchel. She told me that they still take orders over the phone, without benefit of an IVR system, although they prefer that customers use the web, since they have over 300 products and serve a multi-lingual client base.
Ms. Armstrong-Mitchel told me that their average phone order is $20, whereas the average web order is $35: phone orders, however, are more profitable, because their sales force can "upsell" higher-value items.
As an example, she cited a sale they had for "lobster ravioli" last December: they sold more online, but phone orders generated more, (and more profitable) follow-on sales for related items used in preparation of a sauce to go with the ravioli.
The company's customers, she said, are mostly young families, but they are seeing more childless, professional couples as time goes by.
I asked if they serve a lot of physically-challenged customers who are unable to shop for themselves, but Ms. Armstrong-Mitchel said that they have thirty routes, and handicapped customers are only one or two stops per route.
When I inquired what benefit her customers get by ordering deliveries: Ms. Armstrong-Mitchel told me that taking kids to the store is expensive, and told me that industry studies show families spend 40 extra dollars when they go to the supermarket, not just in "kiddie grab" items, but in impulse buys by adults.
Long story short: ordering groceries by phone is alive and well - and sometimes cheaper than going to the supermarket!
Indeed they were avilable,but for SxS offices they were an add-on, not just a conversion, and sufficiently expensive that many step offices were never equpped with them.
The same was true in Providence, RI. Every line had DTMF enabled. To my knowledge they never went through the motions of installing dial-pulse- only here.
There were _lots- of names for that symbol. Those with a background in typography called it 'asterisk', telco documentation often used 'star', as in 'star sixty nine' for a particular CLASS feature, hip-types were known to call it 'splat' -- especially when rendered in a 'mod' typeface (see the 'asterisk' graphic at )
Thee original spec for Touch-tone was the 16 button 'architecture', although many early sets had only the 10-button panel -- probably a 'cost-driven' decision vs. a 12-button one. Why add buttons on the (telco provided) phone when there weren't, yet, any (telco provided!!) services that used them.
One can probably look to the Carterfone decision -- leading to the vast increase in numbers of 'answering machines'; and the 'advanced' models that implemented 'remote access', with features for call playback, deletion, etc. Early such machines used proprietary remotes with their own signaling -- almost invariably 'tone based' audible signaling of some sort -- because that was the only thing that one could reliably pass over a voice-grade telephone circuit. Various 'types' of tones were used -- maybe just a single one, maybe multiple simultaneous ones, maybe several 'in sequence' (a la the 'two-tone sequential', aka '1+1', as was used in many voice-messaging radio paging systems).
There was an eventual shift to using DTMF signaling for the answering- machine functions, as it made possible a 'remote-less' machine -- assuming you were calling from a Touch-Tone phone, that is. DTMF 'button boxes' were still needed if you called from a pulse-only set, or a pay phone that disabled the keypad when the call was connected.
Probably the commercial availability of the aforesaid 'button boxes' would give a good marker point for the 'widespread' usage of DTMF by 'far end' systems. The two biggest 'early adopter' uses were probably answering machines and 'alternative' long-distance calling services.
FWIW, a wikipedia article says the 12 key tonepad came out in 1968.
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While the #* keys are certainly helpful for computer inquiry applications they are not absolutely necessary. Older inquiry applications were usually quite simple as compared to today. The fields were probably fixed length and delimited by timing (which is still done sometimes today).
Back in the 1960s callers got used to time-dependent dialing when TSP/ TSPS came out: To dial an operator assisted call, one dialed 0 followed immediately by the area code and number. If the caller dialed merely zero, after a timed pause the switch would connect the caller to the assistance operator.
Some literature from the 1960s shows 10-key telephones being used as inquiry terminals. (Back in those days often times the keypad was a separate box associated with a rotary telephone set.)
In January 1964 IBM announced its 7770 Audio Response Unit which allowed a computer to answer telephone inquiries with an audio response. The following documentation suggests a push-button telephone or adjunct keypad is required, but the pad shown is only 10 digits.
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Here is a college paper from 1969 that researches telephone inquiry as applied to a medical inquiry system.
In 1982 my residence was served by a No. 5 crossbar switch and Touch Tone was supported even if the subscriber didn't pay for it. But later in 1984 my new residence, served by ESS, supported Touch Tone only if the subscriber paid for it. (Presumably it was easier to administer in ESS than in crossbar). I stuck with rotary service to save money.
In those days we used dial-up BBS's, and sometimes we modified the command code string to our modems (the "AT" command set). I discovered I could set the modem's dial pulse speedup to 20 pulses-per-second instead of the standard 10 pps, and my calls went through more quickly. (One could also change the make/break ratio for foreign service, but I didn't mess with that.)
When I was young, some kids figured out how to modify their telephone dials to operate at 20 pps. I don't know how they did it. But apparently the registers in the panel or No. 1 crossbar swiches which served us accepted digits at that speed. Some PBX switchboards had 20 pps dials.
I do recall that in Australia the then monopoly telco (Telecom) originally came out with their first ever DTMF handset and it only had the digit keys, a little later (mid 1980's) they came out with the full 12 digit version:
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-- Regards, David.
David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.
That's backwards I think (or maybe regional). In hot type typography, it was always called a "splat" in the places I worked (I learned printing in the 70s in high school, and ran a linotype and press for several years while getting my compsci degree). My mom, who was a professional typist (in the days where if you made a mistake on a page, you typed the whole thing over), says they called it an asterisk, or sometimes "bullet". Typography had things they called bullets too, but the splat wasn't usually one of them. Bullet matts fell down the "pi chute" on a linotype and you dropped them into the line by hand when you needed one [1].
Similarly, # was a pound sign, because on invoices, that's what you typed when charging out something by the pound. I didn't come across "star" and "hash" until some years later when I first encountered hacker speak. I refuse to use "hash" though, it's just sounds dumb and doesn't mean anything. *
[1] Dang, sometimes I miss that machine - you don't even see them in museums anymore. It was the most like a Rube Goldberg contraption as you'll ever see in real life, except that it WORKED every time. Well, if it didn't decide to spray lead in your lap because you didn't tighten the line enough anyway [2].
[2] I guess I can't talk about printing without creating at least one hanging indentation. That's actually what bullets were for (as they are now in everyone's boring powerpoints); to start a hanging block of copy.
Per the Bell Labs History, 1925-1975 (pg 521), in 1954 Bell introduced a feature which permitted PBX extension users to dial through a PBX to gain access to a customer-owned recording machine for dictation. After gaining access, the speaker could start, stop, backspace or otherwise control the machine by dialing distinctive control digits. [ref Bell Labs Record Jan 1956.]
Sometime in the mid 1970s I met a family which used MCI to save money on long distance calls to a daughter in college. They had a small Touch Tone generator device that they held over the transmitter.
I learned the Linotype in 1960 in Topeka, Kansas. Still can recite the keyboard. ;-)
A line of mats in the stick, which was too loose that the spacebands couldn't tighten it fully, would cause a "squirt."
The 550 degree molten lead would squirt out and put holes in your shirtsleeves -- if you [were] wearing a [long sleeved] shirt.
Two years later, I rebuilt and ran a Linotype at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas. There the term "squirt" was again used.
Another two years later, at Spencer Printing in Kansas City, Missouri, it was also called a "squirt."
In 1968 they were still calling it a "squirt" at the Anchorage Times newspaper, where several of my roommates worked, and at the Anchorage Daily News where I worked.
Now, in 2012, I see it is still called a "squirt."
Maybe I should have used the term "add-on" instead of "conversion."
They were equipment added onto the mounting bars of a regular 1XB Subscriber Sender. They had a couple dozen wires that were connected to various places on the original SS, the rear relay terminals, and the unit's terminal block.
My thinking is this was a "conversion" from the original dial-pulse SS. Sorry for the confusion.
We had 180 Subscriber Senders, with maybe about 60 of them being "New Senders" which had TouchTone receivers, designed into them by WECo. You might get lucky and be assigned one of those every few requests for dialtone, depending on your Line Link priority to a District Junctor and Subscriber Sender Link Frame.
What the add-on kits did I don't remember, other than making the work of Framemen and Dial Assignment much easier, since TTR and TTB could be sold without changing a subscriber to a 5XB number.
These add-ons could have received TouchTone signals, then output dial pulses. Or maybe they operated the digit registration relays, or simply paralleled their contacts.
This was back around 1975, so my memory is not clear. My wife actually wired many of them for me on my evening shift. She knew how to follow schematics, solder, and wire-wrap. She was actually a TSPS operator in a different building, and went with AT&T at Divestiture.
I do remember they were in cheap plastic housings, and were affixed to the mounting bars with plastic cable ties (Ty-Rap). Someone must have known this 1XB (and the 5XB) would be cut to the new 1ESS in a few short years.
Actually it was a year or so after I left in 1979, when the 1ESS had been upgraded to a 1A-ESS, and I had bid outside as a Teletypeman, later renamed to Systems Technician.
Excerpt from the Bell System Engineering textbook, 1977, pg 457:
. . . "Conversion to Touch Tone operation is difficult and relatively expensive in step-by-step systems. All Touch Tone lines must be grouped together and new switching stages introduced so that these lines may access Touch Tone registers which then generate dial pulses to drive the succeeding switches." . . .
"It was necessary to fit a new dial tone signal, composed of frequencies that did not interfere with TT operation, into all TT offices." . . .
"For economy, the TT station was designed to function with single polarity on the loop*, and would not work with reversed battery--step- by-step usually transmits a battery reversal to the originating station after answer. This prevents using a TT set for end-to-end signalling after the connection was set up." Some kind of workaround was necessary.
*TT telephone sets were later changed so that polarity didn't matter.
Excerpt from the Bell Labs History, 1925-1975, pg 339:
"After WW II, there was a need in some situations for more efficient interfaces between local SxS and other systems using multi-frequency pulsing. Further, there was a need to introduce a degree of flexibility into SxS systems." . . .
Step by step was cumbersome in large metropolitan areas with many trunk choices due to the limits of the 10x10 switch; that was a key reason panel and No.1 xbar were developed. "Senderization" was an effort to improve that (as had been done in the UK), but crossbar was found to be a more cost-effective approach. (If anyone is familiar with any US effort to "senderize" an SxS exchange [such as in Los Angeles], could you share it with us)?
In 1961 Bell developed two projects for TT to serve SxS exchanges. One was the more expensive "compatible" which would be adaptable for common decoders for office translation and to output MF to outgoing trunks. The first of 250 installations was in Kokomo Ind. in March
1965. . . .
The first "non-compatible" was in 1960 in Cave Spring, Va. using TT register-senders.
Later, a lower-cost design was developed for offices with a shorter expected lifespan; this was first implemented in 1974.
In 1976, about 70% of Bell System lines could get TT, and 30% of customers served by such lines had subscribed.
(Would anyone know the experience of General Telephone/Automatic Electric and their early support of TT? Per our discussion of computer access, AE offered a telephone set with both a dial and TT keypad--the user would use the dial to make the connection and then the TT keypad to communicate to the computer.)
I had a squirt as a teenager at the Perry (Okla.) Daily Journal in the
1940s. I walked a few blocks to the doctor's office where he removed it carefully and then dressed it. You can still see pale spaces on my forearm where the lead hit and solidified. That was my only squirt. It is a powerful motivator not to have it happen again. An Intertype would also squirt. It was very similar to a Linotype except in the escapement verge.
As far as I know the entire Los Angeles area (much of it independent and General Telephone in those days) was senderized because of the big installed base of step offices. I also remember reading the first 5XB in a non-Bell office was at the Sunland-Tujunga Telephone Compamy, in the L.A. region.
I understand the use of the term "senderized" but I'm trying to remember if 5XB actually used the term "sender," or if their equivalent were called "registers."
The 1XB Subscriber Sender (possibly Panel as well) was called an "Originating Register" in 5XB I believe. Perhaps the Terminating Sender equivalent in 5XB was a Terminating Register, or Incoming Register?
Some might wonder why a "terminating" sender would be sending anything. That probably was due to Revertive Pulsing, when the Terminating Sender would "send" the command to stop pulsing to the originating office, commonly Panel, by opening (or reversing) the trunk for an instant.
But it has been many years, and I didn't work in the 5XB office as a full-time job assignment. At night I used my ears, and would listen for the 5XB Trouble Recorder to grind continuously, following one Major Alarm "bong" after another. Then I'd chase down crosses in the Translator from broken-off wirewrap "springs" (XET?), and refilled the Trouble Recorder.
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