Re: Acoustic couplers

[Steve Crocker <[e-mail]>]

In 1974 I moved into a condo complex in Marina del Rey near USC-ISI.  As has been my usual practice, I ordered two POTS lines and I went to the phone company to get the phones.  The condo was pre-wired with jacks in each of the major rooms.  The phones I got from the phone company came with plugs that were wired for either line 1 or line 2.  It took me a minute of incredulity to understand the system.  Each jack was wired for both lines, and each phone was wired to connect to one or the other of the two lines.  Clever but definitely different from anything I had seen before.  I could move the phones from room to room.  Each phone "knew" whether it was for line 1 or line 2.

Steve

On Jan 3, 2013, at 9:52 AM, Dave Crocker <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 1/2/2013 7:08 PM, Ned Freed wrote:
>> Of course. However, we're talking about post-Carterphone here.
>> Carterphone was
>> 1968, and I'm sure four pin plugs were in use by then.
> 
> Not in Los Angeles.  As I recall, all the phone around there were hardwired into the 70s.
> 
> 
>> Also keep in mind that AT&T fought the Carterphone decision for many years.
> 
> So it would seem...
> 
> I went to work at MCI in 1983, building MCI Mail.  Our group was on M street, near corporate HQ.  One morning I got a call telling me to come into work wearing sloppy clothes. (This was normally a 3-piece suit place.)  There had been a fire on the floor above, where the MCI attorneys for the case against AT&T worked.  Lots of water and smoke damage.  The claim was that the fire had burned, ummmmm... especially hot...
> 
> 
>> A line mod was probably against the rules irrespective of Carterphone in
>> those
>> days. But had you bought your own phone with a ringer switch and hooked
>> that
> 
> Not allowed at that point.  All user equipment that was wired to the system had to come from the phone company in L.A.
> 
> 
> d/
> -- 
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net