[GreenKeys] Re: Ancient Technology

Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:11:12 -0800 (PST)

Ed 
With all this talent it's a wonder no one has started their own business utilizing this "old" knowledge.
Maybe it could be integrated with a wireless hot spot in the neighborhood.
Look at x86 processors --most are junked but are 100 times more powerful than anything we used in the 80's and how much processor power do you need for managing security-fire alarms ?
Ed  may know this --what type processors are used to set up todays computer based vehicles ?
I read where a young man took an old laptop and designed a program to set up his very expensive Harley. 
It takes him 20 minutes to fine tune it .
Is anyone out there working in the "wired home business"?Home theaters ?

Phil Schelinski

Ed Hickey <[email protected]> wrote:
I did some work for IBT security. At that time they were called Dialed
Number Recorders. There were 2 inputs. One was the number being monitored
and the other was an outside line to call TOD. The box recordered a number
of parameters on the monitored line and when there was activity on the line,
the 2nd line dialed TOD. The idea was to get a legal time stamp.

I got involved when I built a box to record the monitored data. The
customer we were monitoring was a bulletin board service. I used a TTY Mod
43 and a 103E data set. When the call was made, the 43 would print both
sides of the conversation.

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Don Robert House [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 7:41 PM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; Ed Hickey; Bob Liddy; Bob
Cnota; Ken Clinkman; Bill Henry; Phil Schelinski; Steve Kissinger;
George Hutchison; David Weil; Rush Glick; Warren Brader
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Re: Ancient Technology

Thanks Jim, The "pull boxes" for police or fire as I recall are
"enunciators"
Don

At 5:29 PM -0600 10/27/2003, [email protected] wrote:
>Thanks to Ben for that fine treatise on ancient technology. I'll add a
>few things that come to mind. There is something in the phone business,
>believe it is called a "pen register", that is used to record the phone
>numbers that someone dials. Mostly used for law-enforcement
>investigations, where the cops want to track who is being called by
>someone they are watching. I believe this takes almost the same kind
>of court order as one for wiretapping.
>
>Landline Morse telegraphers ceased to use the pen recorder as soon as they
>were able to convince their bosses that they could indeed copy by ear from
>the clicks the machine made. Recorders continued to be used at some
>stations, where the operator had other duties and was not always available
>to copy code by ear.
>
>Ink recorders were used on trans-Atlantic cables. The cable code is like
>Morse code except it is tri-state: one polarity for dot, the opposite for
>dash, and no current for the spaces. The cables were worked above the
>Nyquist rate; that is, signals were sent so fast that the current in the
>cable did not reach full strength when a single dot was sent. It was up
>to the operators to look at the wiggles on the tape and figure out what
>had been sent. There are some samples of this in the Western Union
>Technical Review and other publications.
>
>Then with radio in the 1930s and 40s there was very high speed Morse
>telegraphy: 500 or 1000 wpm. This was transmitted from punched paper
>tape and received on ink recorders. Then the tape was pulled past an
>operator at a typewriter who transcribed it. Examples of this equipment
>can be seen in advertisements of the T. R. McElroy Co. in the back of
>the ARRL Handbooks of the 40s and 50s.
>
>Western Union had an ink recorder called an "undulator" I believe this
>was used as test equipment. You could look at signals coming from a
>TTY, for example, and see if any of the transmitter contacts were bouncing
>or operating at the wrong times.
>
>The burglar alarm system Ben described is very much like the fire alarm
>systems, and also like the messenger-call system used by Western Union.
>Sometimes you see the call boxes at antique dealers' - an oval shaped
>porcelain base with a metal cover in white and blue enamel, and a handle
>sticking out. A later model was a yellow box. You wind up the handle
>and release it, and the spring-loaded mechanism sends out a short message
>in dots and dashes. This gets recorded at the W.U. office on a paper
>tape, where the messenger superviser reads it and sends out a messenger.
>This continued in service into the 1950s at least. Of course it would
>have been a lot easier just to call W.U. on the telephone.
>
>
>
>--
>
>jhaynes at alumni dot uark dot edu

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