FYI: 25th Anniversary of Ward Christensen's BBS

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Fri Feb 21 17:27:01 2003

> Er, I don't think the modem was invented in late 50's.
>
> Modems have been used to send data over phone lines (and over radio) since at
> least 1940.
>
> They may have been called "Terminal units", but they did the basic modem
> things of mod/demodulating data onto an audio carrier.

Thanks for backing me on this. Western Electric was fooling around with
modems back in the 1930s, as a way to multiplex several telegraph and
telephone links over one set of wires.

The "first" heavy use of modems was in North Africa during World War 2.
The Allies kept in constant communication with the reat of the world
using both landline and radio links using modems for telegraph and
teletype communications. This is quite well documented. In fact, I used
to have one of the modems, and I still have quite a few of the technical
manuals.

I think the Germans used a series of modems as well, for the same purpose.

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Fri Feb 21 2003 - 17:27:01 GMT