3 ms·

whoa! What did I just see!? Could someone please explain to me how that telephone head set placed next to printer thing contraption works?

mikepurvis 4y ago
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/couplers.html http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/couplers.html
linksnapzz 4y ago
The printer thing is a teletype. Think of it as a terminal onscreen, but...the text actually gets printed to typewriter paper line by line. The phone thing is almost certainly an acoustic coupler for a 300-baud modem, hooked to the teletype. You'd dial the modem pool for the server you were trying to connect to, and when you heard the happy modem noises come through the handset, you'd slam it down on the two rubber cups, and your modem/terminal would do the Hayes AT dance, and a point-to-point data connection would be established. 300 baud was good for printing teletypes, as the mechanical printhead can only move so fast....
- bluGill 4y ago
  More like 150 baud. I'm not sure if there was protocol negotiations or just a lot of wait back and forth. I actually used such a thing to dial a BBS when my Atari 800xl's modem got hit by lightning. Obsolete then, and slow but I got my fix. Fun times...
  - linksnapzz 4y ago
    Yeah, looking more closely, acoustic couplers predated the Hayes modem by at least a decade. I don't know what the standard was for agreeing on a baud rate for earlier ones.
aasasd 4y ago
I mean, modems and faxes in effect just whistle into the phone line. At some level of proficiency, you might be able to do that yourself ;) Afaik phone phreaking used a variety of whistling devices of different complexity: from https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/02/phone-phreaks-the-toy-whistles-early-hackers-used-to-break-into-the-phone-network.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/02/phone-phreaks-the-t... to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box
chasil 4y ago
In my high school, we had teletypes akin to these for FORTRAN classes, and actual IBM keypunch machines for COBOL. Our COBOL programs had to be submitted as a deck of cards wrapped with a rubber band. To ruin someone else's assignment, shuffle their deck and return it to the box.
None4U 4y ago
The "printer thing" I believe is like a terminal that renders on paper instead of a CRT. The telephone is like SSH.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  > The telephone is like SSH. SSH with 7-bit ASCII encryption :-)

mikepurvis 4y ago

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/couplers.html http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/couplers.html

linksnapzz 4y ago

The printer thing is a teletype. Think of it as a terminal onscreen, but...the text actually gets printed to typewriter paper line by line. The phone thing is almost certainly an acoustic coupler for a 300-baud modem, hooked to the teletype. You'd dial the modem pool for the server you were trying to connect to, and when you heard the happy modem noises come through the handset, you'd slam it down on the two rubber cups, and your modem/terminal would do the Hayes AT dance, and a point-to-point data connection would be established. 300 baud was good for printing teletypes, as the mechanical printhead can only move so fast....

bluGill 4y ago
More like 150 baud. I'm not sure if there was protocol negotiations or just a lot of wait back and forth. I actually used such a thing to dial a BBS when my Atari 800xl's modem got hit by lightning. Obsolete then, and slow but I got my fix. Fun times...
- linksnapzz 4y ago
  Yeah, looking more closely, acoustic couplers predated the Hayes modem by at least a decade. I don't know what the standard was for agreeing on a baud rate for earlier ones.

aasasd 4y ago

I mean, modems and faxes in effect just whistle into the phone line. At some level of proficiency, you might be able to do that yourself ;) Afaik phone phreaking used a variety of whistling devices of different complexity: from https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/02/phone-phreaks-the-toy-whistles-early-hackers-used-to-break-into-the-phone-network.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/02/phone-phreaks-the-t... to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box

chasil 4y ago

In my high school, we had teletypes akin to these for FORTRAN classes, and actual IBM keypunch machines for COBOL. Our COBOL programs had to be submitted as a deck of cards wrapped with a rubber band. To ruin someone else's assignment, shuffle their deck and return it to the box.

None4U 4y ago

The "printer thing" I believe is like a terminal that renders on paper instead of a CRT. The telephone is like SSH.

Beltalowda 4y ago
> The telephone is like SSH. SSH with 7-bit ASCII encryption :-)