Comments by "kd1s" (@kd1s) on "AT&T Tech Channel" channel.

  1. I owe my career as a Senior Linux Engineer to these guys, well and the guys who came after them and invented Linux.
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  2. And in the late 1980's and early 90's I got the good fairy of Bell System or then Nynex fuckups handed to me. I put in an order for service, everything got connected, service worked. But bills never came. Took a year and a half of phone calls to convince them that I did in fact have service. End story was my order went out for hookup but never got returned so billing never started. Plus they screwed up my long distance - they fat fingered my phone number in the PIC setup and the local VA hospital got my long distance bills.
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  3. Kind of funny when you think of all the features we love on cellphones, or take for granted used to be features that Bell charged you extra to provide them. And they completely missed on the Picture Phone too.
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  4. And jump forward 10 years and they completely missed it would all be in a handheld device.
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  5. And if you were lucky enough to have a line on 5ESS you didn't hear the click. And of course Mother Bell charged dearly for those 'features'. Now it's all packaged on your cell phone. No additional charge. Yet most people aren't aware that cell phones can do 3-way. But cell phones now have call waiting, call forwarding, call block, speed dial. Amazing how technology marches ahead.
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  6. And then fiber came around and goodbye microwave.
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  7. A shame the old Bell System is a thing of the past. I recall my first phone line in 1982 - it cost $12 per month and that was WITH the rental of the phone.
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  8. And now Bell Labs are a tiny little part of a foreign telecom company called Alcatel. How the fortunes have changed.
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  9. Heh - and to think we're in danger of exhausting IPV4 address space right now.
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  10. Interesting that in 1946 Bell was already neck deep in TV transmissions. Logical choice really. And now - most of our TV service comes in via a coaxial cable and fiber optics. And content to the cable providers comes in via satellite.
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  11. The thing about it is that while it was a marvel of engineering, Bell backed away from this rather quickly when she realized the 1MHz bandwidth necessary for the video signal would require a duplicate switching system for the video calls. Of course about a two decades or so later DSL came about and offered the necessary bandwidth.
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  12. How very wrong they were about the 21st century. Completely missed that phones would move from being tethered to phones you could hold in the palm of your hand that have more features like video, web, etc.
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  13. When you consider the evolution of long distance communication and the ways they did it is fascinating. From Coaxial cable, to microwave, then sattelite, and finally fiber optics which is he predominant method today.
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  14. What's funny is that now you can dial 0 on your cell phone and get nothing. There are no more operators.
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  15. And the interesting part is even TD type microwave couldn't hold a candle to what was to come just a few years later - fiber optics. 
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  16. Awesome console on the ESS. And I've been fortunate to manage a Definitey G3iv6 and Prologix G3iv11 system during my career. The commands are similar on the latter to the original ESS. Short and to the point. 
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  17. Love the snap of C code at 17 seconds.
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  18. I recall in the late 1970's and early 1980's you could get RAM chips based on CCD and in fact I believe a lot of them still are. That said, they came in ceramic packages with bright brassy covers over the chip. If you pried the cover off the chip and proceeded to read the RAM chip, you could assemble an image from it.
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  19. It's odd how the old Bell System could hit it straight on for some things like DTMF, but miss so badly about what the 21st century and even late 20th would bring. They completely downplayed the cellular revolution. That was a biggy.
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  20. Interesting that they go so much right and so much wrong. Video phones aren't exactly commonplace yet. And they didn't envision the net as it exists today but they came within a hairs width. 
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  21. ***** Yes indeed. I know about fiber's capabilities. And we've squeezed the hell out of RF systems as of late too. 
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  22. Well - interesting how they went with magnetic memory. I know at one point they played with Williams tubes, flying spot etc. But those must have been too expensive. And consider - we now use capacitive memories and some magnetic memory on our computers and devices.
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  23. Interesting nowadays the only wire left is a charging cable for mobile phones. And of course we no longer pay for Long Distance
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  24. I wonder if another disastrous event happens who's got the capability to get service restored quickly. Because like it or not even GSM cell phones use switching infrastructure.
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  25. I'd imagine the infrastructure to provide this service is no longer in place. I know Ma Bell realized they'd have to build an entire switching system for the video side using higher bandwidth channels and PicturePhone was quietly retired.
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  26. Yeah - capacitive RAM didn't happen until the late 1960's.
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  27. And my other fave in my collection is the WE 1D2 pay station!
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  28. So wait the ABM preceded Reagans SDI program? Really?
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  29. In my collection I have the Sculpture in Brown Touch Tone and the Celebrity in Blue with Touch Tone.
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  30. Well it's true on-the-fly translation is possible - except it's not at&t that provides it but Facebook via Google Translate. Imagine that.
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  31.  @jgrysiak6566  Yeah I recall when I lived in North Providence, RI. First place i lived ahad a Providence rate center -phone number (401)-353. Then moved a half mile away and got a Pawtucket rate center number (401)-725. Which meant no I paid a toll to call Warwick, RI. Found out about FX lines and got one.
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  32. Two of my most prized possessions in my Western Electric collection are a Celebrity with TouchTone and a brown Sculpture TouchTone.
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  33. People weren't ready for it. And while Bell had the video phones to a high art, they realized they would have to build a whole different switching system for the video side of the call in parallel with the voice side. Too expensive!
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  34. I guess in 1976 they had no idea that wireless would become huge. Or that the price of computers vis a vis power would come way down to the point where a phone that's basically given away can surf the web, text, phone, take pictures, movies, etc. 
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  35. I've seen photos of the Morris test - I'd love to see video of that one. 
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  36. Wait, At&T is using Cisco phones?
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  37. It's funny about the USB drives in the parking lot. I had once the idea of screen printing the State of Rhode Island logo on a bunch of USB sticks and scattering them in state parking lots. The damage would be significant because to my knowledge there's zero training security wise.
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  38. ***** Yes indeed - ch for change, st for station, tr for trunk group, cov for coverage paths etc. Easy. 
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  39. Well I do know a former place of employment whose HP LaserJet 5si was fully exposed on the net.
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  40. Oh I've scanned the hell out of my IP cameras.
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  41. You know what is really funny about this. AT&T used lots of Microwave but Bill McGowan one upped them with his own microwave systems. Its what destroyed the Bell System.
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  42.  @ericsvalland4417  actually what killed long lines wasn't just fiber. Automation played a big part and so reduced the cost of long distance calls. That's what killed the Bell System
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  43. All my IOT stuff connects through it's own VLAN view wifi and through my Cisco firewall.
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  44. Now there are no more operators
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  45. Oh sure the could not fail but when they screwed up they really screwed up.
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  46.  @albear972  thing was any computing wasn't in your home but at the central office. All the phones had were a few transistors and big ass induction coils.
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  47. And that's why the Bell System was split up. It cost less and less to provide long distance service but they still maintained charging 20 cents a minute and such. All of this was predicted by Claude Shannon's Information Science theory. He predicted in essence the demise of the Bell System.
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  48. So this is post 1954 - and the Xbar looks like a #5 Xbar. and those were deployed from around 1948 to the 1980's when everything went electronic or digital. I remember living in Providence and being served by a 1A ESS then moving to North Providence and had the #5 Crossbar. I hated that change.
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