June 17, 2008

SUPER-ROBOT SPEEDS PHONED TELEGRAMS (Mar, 1931)

Filed under: Telephone — @ 10:44 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Mar, 1931
| Buy on Ebay

SUPER-ROBOT SPEEDS PHONED TELEGRAMS

When a New Yorker calls one of the city’s principal telegraph companies on the phone to send a wire, he now sets in motion a super-robot so swift that a stopwatch often cannot time it.

Within the short space of one second, on the average, he hears the answering voice of one of 110 girls, who sit at desks as shown in photo above. This is made possible by the “automatic call distributor, ” called one of the most important inventions in recent years.
Read the rest of this entry »

June 16, 2008

Invented Earlier than You’d Think – Pt. 2 – Answering Machines

Filed under: From the Archives, Telephone — @ 8:46 pm

If you missed it, check out the first post of the series: Fax Machines

PHONE CALLS ARE ANSWERED BY MACHINE (May, 1924)
I’d seen a lot of answering machines in later magazines but I was pretty surprised to see this one in a 1924 Popular Mechanics. It even features a dial indicator that shows how many calls the owner has missed.

answering_machine

Device Answers Phone and Tells Caller When You Will Return to Office (Aug, 1932)
This later product called the “Ansophone” is a an answering machine in the literal sense of the word. It will answer the phone and play a message to the caller, but it doesn’t record any incoming messages.

lrg_answering_machine

The Perfect Secretary—a Machine (Apr, 1933)
This gigantic contraption seems to be functionally equivalent to the first machine above. You’d think after almost a decade that the technology would allow a smaller device, not a bigger one. I’m guessing that it probably worked a lot better though.

perfect_secretary

June 11, 2008

Making a Telephone Talk Through Loudspeaker (May, 1929)

Filed under: Telephone — @ 12:50 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1929
| Buy on Ebay

Making a Telephone Talk Through Loudspeaker

“WILL you speak a little louder please?” That request is unnecessary for users of a new telephone loudspeaker invented by H.O. Rugh, of Chicago, Ill. The installation consists of a horn loudspeaker operating from the telephone receiver through an audio amplifier similar to amplifiers used in radio. The latter is supplied with current from the house lighting circuit and is contained in a small cabinet upon which the telephone instrument rests.
Read the rest of this entry »

June 3, 2008

Directory Dials the Phone (Jan, 1947)

Filed under: Telephone — @ 9:41 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1947
| Buy on Ebay

Directory Dials the Phone

A NEW desk telephone directory not only finds the number you want but actually dials it for you. All you have to do is slide the knob on the face of the device, called an Auto Dial, to the name you want, then press the small lever at the foot of the machine. When the lever returns to its normal position, in five or six seconds, your call is made and you pick up the phone.
Read the rest of this entry »

June 2, 2008

Midget Radio for Policemen Is Carried in Pocket (Nov, 1936)

Filed under: Crime and Police, Radio — @ 11:18 pm
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Nov, 1936
| Buy on Ebay


Midget Radio for Policemen Is Carried in Pocket

Latest equipment for the English bobby is a miniature radio receiving set with which he picks up instructions from police headquarters while on duty. The set is so small that the policeman carries the complete outfit in his pocket.

May 31, 2008

Witness Stand Is Wired for Sound (Dec, 1938)

Filed under: Communications — @ 5:08 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Dec, 1938
| Buy on Ebay

Witness Stand Is Wired for Sound
To make sure that juries are able to hear clearly each word spoken by witnesses on the stand, a Los Angeles, Calif., court is now employing a public-address system with the witness answering questions through a hand microphone. On many occasions, it is believed, members of the jury miss part of the testimony by reason of the low voices of the witnesses or because of bad acoustics. The photograph above shows a witness telling her story to the microphone.

May 30, 2008

What the Telephone Map Shows (Sep, 1914)

Filed under: Advertisements, Telephone — @ 1:22 am
Source: Popular Electricity And Modern Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1914
| Buy on Ebay
Tags:

What the Telephone Map Shows

EVERY dot on the map marks a town where there is a telephone exchange, the same sized dot being used for a large city as for a small village. Some of these exchanges are owned by the Associated Bell companies and some by independent companies. Where joined together in one system they meet the needs of each community and, with their suburban lines, reach 70,000 places and over 8,000,000 subscribers.

The pyramids show that only a minority of the exchanges are Bell-owned, and that the greater majority of the exchanges are owned by independent companies and connected with the Bell System.

At comparatively few points are there two telephone companies, and there are comparatively few exchanges, chiefly rural, which do not have outside connections.

The recent agreement between the Attorney General of the United States and the Bell System will facilitate connections between all telephone subscribers regardless of who owns the exchanges.

Over 8,000 different telephone companies have already connected their exchanges to provide universal service for the whole country.

American Telephone and Telegraph Company And Associated Companies
One Policy One System Universal Service

May 23, 2008

Compuserve Trademarked the Word “Email” (Jan, 1983)

Filed under: Advertisements, Communications, Computers — @ 6:16 am
Source: Byte ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1983
| Buy on Ebay

I’m guessing they figured it was unenforceable because they abandoned the trademark in 1984.

Last Night We Exchanged Letters With Mom, Then Had A Party For Eleven People In Nine Different States And Only Had To Wash One Glass…

That’s CompuServe, The Personal Communications Network For Every Computer Owner

And it doesn’t matter what kind of computer you own. You’ll use CompuServe’s Electronic Mail system (we call it Emailâ„¢) to compose, edit and send letters to friends or business associates. The system delivers any number of messages to other users anywhere in North America.
Read the rest of this entry »

May 18, 2008

“Finger” Speeds Dialing (Sep, 1939)

Filed under: Telephone — @ 9:06 pm
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Sep, 1939
| Buy on Ebay

“Finger” Speeds Dialing

Easily attached to the top of a dial-telephone receiver, a metal finger now on the market fits snugly into the dial holes, helps prevent inaccurate dialing, eliminates the danger of broken finger nails, and speeds up the dialing process by about ten percent.

May 12, 2008

Secret Documents Sent by Radio (Jan, 1932)

Filed under: Communications — @ 11:21 pm
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jan, 1932
| Buy on Ebay
Tags:

Secret Documents Sent by Radio

M. BELIN, a French inventor, has perfected a machine known as the “Belinogram”, which makes it possible to send by wireless with absolute safety documents of the most secret nature. The sending machine Belin has developed decomposes the message, document or photograph, while the receiver employed assembles the electrical impulses into the original form. Any other machine, although receiving the same document, finds the signals altogether distorted and of no value whatever.

May 5, 2008

Heroes of the Switchboard and Phone Lines (Jun, 1935)

Filed under: Telephone — @ 9:55 pm
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jun, 1935
| Buy on Ebay

Huh, apparently at some time after this article was published an extra ‘e’ was added to employee because in this article it’s all employes and employe.

Heroes of the Switchboard and Phone Lines

FIRES, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes— these are some of the hazards that bring drama into the work of telephone employes. Keeping communication lines open during disasters is a vital matter. As long as nature behaves herself, as long as things go along normally, the work of the lineman, the operator, and the man on the test board is routine, but when trouble begins heroes are made.
Read the rest of this entry »

May 4, 2008

FIRE-ALARM CALLS SENT OUT WITH PERFORATED PLATES (May, 1924)

Filed under: Communications — @ 3:05 pm
Source: Popular Mechanics ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: May, 1924
| Buy on Ebay

FIRE-ALARM CALLS SENT OUT WITH PERFORATED PLATES

By means of perforated plates fitted into the transmitting apparatus in the fire telegraph dispatching equipment of the new central station in the Bronx, New York City, alarms are relayed automatically to outlying stations. Simultaneous signals are sounded in a number of fire houses by means of electric connections formed when current is sent through the plates.

21 queries. 0.831 seconds.