[GreenKeys] bell data set brochires and some other bell bool links via bitsaver yea we want

[Jim Haynes]

One thing that comes through from those brochures, though not stated, is
a sort of breathless, "we never thought of this before, but how would
you like to send data over the telephone network?" concept.  In a way it
was a major change in doctrine, in that up until then the "no foreign
attachments" rules were firmly in force.  On the switched network you
didn't connect anything not provided by the telephone company.  And now
they realized that they could not provide everything the customer might
want, so they provided the means with modems to attach arbitrary devices
to the network.  (One exception to my assertion is the "recorder 
connector" they provided in the late 1940s or so to permit tape recording
telephone conversations.)  Previously the only way to connect a customer-
provided device to a telephone line was to lease a private line; and
those were expensive and inflexible.

Another conceptual block that had to be overcome was the notion that
people transmitting data on the voice network wanted to talk to each
other before turning on the data.  So the data sets all came with 
telephones, even if what the customer wanted was more like autodial and
autoanswer under computer control.

Another bad idea was that the 100 series data sets all had to be capable
of both originating and answering calls.  When we got into computer time
sharing what was needed was a rack holding a large number of answer-only
data sets at the computer end, and originate-only sets at for the 
terminals.  We also could have used acoustic-coupled sets for the 
terminals, but that was not something the Bell System was ever going to
sanction.

jhhaynes at earthlink dot net