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Fighting the good fight
Picture of RogueJSK
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quote:
Originally posted by bendable:
I have heard it said that the I-phones have four times the computer ability of many of the early space mission capsules


Not just 4 times... 120 million times!

From http://www.zmescience.com/rese...pared-to-apollo-432/:

quote:
Put simply, the iPhone 6's clock is 32,600 times faster than the best Apollo era computers and could perform instructions 120,000,000 times faster.

You wouldn't be wrong in saying an iPhone could be used to guide 120,000,000 Apollo era spacecraft to the moon, all at the same time.


And that's based on the previous generation iPhone 6. The newer iPhone 7 is even more powerful.
 
Posts: 32430 | Location: Northwest Arkansas | Registered: January 06, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Baroque Bloke
Picture of Pipe Smoker
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Back in the olden days of analog telephone transmission, the carriers used the voice circuit for signaling. On long distance calls, you'd often hear that signaling as a rapid sequence of tones of various pitches. The tones weren't of the musical scale, but they had a musical quality nonetheless. I loved hearing them – there was a spooky, mysterious quality about them as well.

At the beginning of digital telephone transmission, the carriers continued to use the voice channel for signaling (robbed bit), but it was inaudible to the callers.



Serious about crackers
 
Posts: 8856 | Location: San Diego | Registered: July 26, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Delusions of Adequacy
Picture of zoom6zoom
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I-phones have four times the computer ability of many of the early space mission capsules

I think of that every time I see the part in Apollo 13 where they're trying to stay under the power budget...




I have my own style of humor. I call it Snarkasm.
 
Posts: 17944 | Location: Virginia | Registered: June 02, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of Wreckless
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My dad was a switchman for Ma Bell. When I needed to make a long distance call I would call him at work and he would manually patch the call through. Voila, no charge! Of course, the downside was that he was listening in. Remember those strange clicks you'd hear while using the phone in the old days? That was most likely a Bell employee listening in to your call for fun. They did it all the time.


La Dolce Vita
 
Posts: 543 | Location: SW Florida & SNJ | Registered: July 26, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
Picture of V-Tail
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quote:
Originally posted by jhe888:
Yes! I couldn't recall the name "WATS line," but that was it.
Wide
Area
Telephone
Service



הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים
 
Posts: 30546 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Non-Miscreant
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quote:
Originally posted by Wreckless:
Remember those strange clicks you'd hear while using the phone in the old days? That was most likely a Bell employee listening in to your call for fun. They did it all the time.


Better still was the dairy I worked at in the 1970s. We had partial fill orange drink containers. All good, clean drinks, just unsalable. The roach coach would pull up across the street and all of our employees along with the "Fasfoto" employees would converge. One of our guys would tote a milk case of partial fills to trade to the photo guys. What we'd get were duplicate copies of interesting rolls of film. Things like honeymoon photos or amateur porn. There was a desk drawer in the plant office full of nasty pixs. Smile

On the phone bill thing, I don't think I ever saw one until we got married in 1970. Guess it was my dad's little secret.

In this thread we speak of dialing a number. When was the last time you dialed one? Today's kids are just baffled at a rotary dial. I'm also trying to think of the last time I saw a paay phone. Could be my travels don't take me to those places.


Unhappy ammo seeker
 
Posts: 18385 | Location: Kentucky, USA | Registered: February 25, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
Picture of V-Tail
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quote:
Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
The tones weren't of the musical scale
Dial tone was a mix of two frequencies, one of which was 440, which is a standard A (except for the Cleveland Symphony under George Szell. They used to tune to a 442 A, which gave them a brighter sound. But I digress).

I had some musician friends who used to pick up the telephone and use dial tone to tune their instruments.



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Posts: 30546 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
Picture of V-Tail
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quote:
Originally posted by rburg:
In this thread we speak of dialing a number. When was the last time you dialed one?






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Posts: 30546 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Baroque Bloke
Picture of Pipe Smoker
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quote:
Originally posted by V-Tail:
quote:
Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
The tones weren't of the musical scale
Dial tone was a mix of two frequencies, one of which was 440, which is a standard A (except for the Cleveland Symphony under George Szell. They used to tune to a 442 A, which gave them a brighter sound. But I digress).

I had some musician friends who used to pick up the telephone and use dial tone to tune their instruments.

I was clearly describing long distance (Interexchange) signaling. Here are the two-of-six frequency pairs used for that, I believe, and none of them are found on the standard (concert A at 440 Hz) musical scale:

Interexchange signaling frequency pairs in Hz:

700, 900 = KP (start)
700, 1100 = Digit 0
900, 1100 = Digit 1
700, 1300 = Digit 2
900, 1300 = Digit 3
1100, 1300 = Digit 4
700, 1500 = Digit 5
900, 1500 = Digit 6
1100, 1500 = Digit 7
1300, 1500 = Digit 8
1100, 1700 = Digit 9
1500, 1700 = ST (end)

BTW, “Ensemble 415” is a successful musical group with many well-received recordings. Their concert A is 415 Hz, rather than 440 Hz, reflecting the baroque-era practice, when gut was used for violin strings.

Oh, what we’re doing to bendable’s thread…



Serious about crackers
 
Posts: 8856 | Location: San Diego | Registered: July 26, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
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Pipe Smoker -- you are absolutely correct about signaling tones.

I was just throwing in an aside, relating music to TPC tones.

Yet another aside -- there is another set of frequencies that are generated by your telephone when you use a Touch-Tone keypad. This is the DTMF set. Two sets, actually, each set with four frequencies.

Lower band has 697, 770, 852, and 941.

Upper band has 1209, 1336, 1477, and 1633.

Each of the buttons on the telephone keypad generates a dual tone, one from the lower set and one from the upper set.

The four combinations that use 1633 from the upper set are reserved for A, B, C, and D -- buttons not found on consumer telephone keypads. I don't know what these are used for, never encountered them as a switching system engineer at Bell Labs, long long ago.



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Posts: 30546 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Baroque Bloke
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V-Tail – Did you ever meet Claude Shannon at Bell Labs? He was an Einstein-class genius. My employment at Qualcomm made my retirement much more comfortable, thanks to the fact that Irwin Jacobs, QCOM CEO, understood Shannon better than any other telecom CEO.



Serious about crackers
 
Posts: 8856 | Location: San Diego | Registered: July 26, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
Picture of V-Tail
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quote:
Originally posted by Pipe Smoker:
V-Tail – Did you ever meet Claude Shannon at Bell Labs?
Nope. His name was well-known, but there were many thousands of people employed at multiple locations. I never met any of the "biggies."



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Posts: 30546 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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All I can remember about this is Captain Crunch whistles and black boxes designed to defeat Ma Bell charges. I had a friend who was an expert at these technical things.
 
Posts: 17177 | Location: Stuck at home | Registered: January 02, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Drill Here, Drill Now
Picture of tatortodd
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quote:
Originally posted by RogueJSK:
quote:
Originally posted by bendable:
I don't think that I have said anything on any phone in the last 5 years , that could justify a $700.00 telephone.


I think you're missing the point. Smartphones are much more than just telephones. They're basically small computers. If all you need is something to make phone calls, you can do that with a $20 cell phone.

Well beyond simply making phone calls or sending text messages, smartphones these days are used for watching TV and movies, listening to music, taking professional-quality photos, playing video games, reading books and other publications, handling tasks at work, creating and editing documents, handling banking transactions, keeping track of personal calendars, sending emails, surfing the web, and countless other tasks.

In fact, there's a growing number of people (especially in the 20s-and-under crowd) that don't even own a computer, and do all their computer-related tasks with just their smartphones.

So while you might not spend $700 on just a phone to make phone calls, would you spend $700 on a powerful computer with massive capabilities that could fit in your pocket and almost instantly access the near-entirety of human knowledge anywhere you go? Oh, and it also makes phone calls.
15 years ago, for work I had to carry a pager, a cell phone, a digital camera, a GPS, a PDA, and charging cables for each. Now, my iPhone outperforms all of them, takes up a fraction of the space, and I only need one charger.

Heck, my first digital camera cost so much money that a VP had to sign off on it.



Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.
 
Posts: 23102 | Location: Northern Suburbs of Houston | Registered: November 14, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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