Subject: Re: milliways history Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 15:31:12 -0700 From: Hugh Stegman To: thenewhouse@earthlink.net >all/ boys, but >altogether too often, it sure /seemed/ that way. The first female in this weird scene that anyone can remember was Lynzie, as in Lynzie's Motherboard. She was this neo-hippie, Earth Mother type. There was also the famous Amber Yard/Star Sapphire (aka Gretchen Kast) who was the only female on Palantir, or at least the only one that wasn't just completely and utterly weirded out, but she has fallen from the planet. (Last seen moving to Altadena.) >The phone company didn't know which residential lines were >dedicated to this sort of public service; they didn't really >know what a modem was in the first place. They knew, as they rented strange, hardwired versions to mainframes, but the idea that someone would want their home line to be answered by one of the things was just too weird. If you go back far enough, you find modems with ringer equivalence numbers. You were supposed to call the phone co and tell them the REN of your modem so they wouldn't freak when they tested the line at 3 AM and the impedance was "wrong." I actually did this once. The telco lady said, "Oh, we don't want to know these any more." Apparently now they could care less as long as the ren of your whole line stays below something like 5. >To tell the phone company you wanted a >residential line so your computer could answer the phone >was madness. They'd probably think you were running a timeshare data processing service, or a dial-your-match pay BBS, and want to charge business rates for it. Or the sales droid would just think you were some kind of a foreign spy for wanting two lines at home in the first place. Best to have your 'rents front for you. "Oh, you know teenagers, never off the phone...." >Back then, when you were asked what time >it was and responded, Twelve thirty-seven, people thought >you were some kind of freak. The first people I knew, besides radio operators when they were logging things, who gave the number of minutes after the hour, were film makers. I suspect it had something to do with the industry's general preoccupation with time (which, after all, *is* money :-) ). By my time, if I told anyone it was twelve thirty-seven, I would either get a quizzical look, or people who knew me better would look at their own digital watches and usually start a discussion of who had the seconds the closest. (It came down to who had zeroed to WWV last.) A New Year's leap second could start a half hour argument. (There *was* one! There wasn't! There was! :-) ). >Digital watches had just >barely surpassed cool toy status. They were making digital CLOCKS for radio stations. They used mechanical wheels for the numbers. The most common one would go CLUNK once a minute. You didn't have to look at the thing to know a minute had elapsed, though the expensive one had a bell every 10 minutes for station ID. The same company made an ON THE AIR sign that wired to your xmit/ receive relay. I always wanted to use one with a walkie talkie. (Around my neck or in the other hand. At the time the thing would have been 4 times the walkie talkie's size, now it would be more like 10 times.) >Making art and social contact via little blinking lights >was a pretty weird thing to do. Guys would think you were a geek. Women would think you were flat-out crazy. How could anyone communicate like that? You can't even SEE people. >It still can be. It still is. -hugh rfwatts@primenet.com finger for PGP public key unsolicited commercial e-mail is billed.