Collaborate Disseminate
We’ve often thought that while going to the moon in the 1960s was audacious, it was just the flashiest of many audacious feats attempted and accomplished in the 20th century. …read more Continue reading How the Bell System Was Built
Those who haven’t experienced the destruction of a house fire should consider themselves lucky. The speed with which fire can erase a lifetime of work — or a life, for …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Rebuilding a Fire-Ravaged Telephone Exchange
When it comes to mechanical keyboards, there’s no end to the amount of customization that can be done. The size and layout of the keyboard is the first thing to …read more Continue reading Taking Mechanical Keyboard Sounds to the Next Level
Being buried alive isn’t fun, we imagine. Fear of it led to the development of various safety coffin ideas in the 18th and 19th centuries, and [Glen Akins] wonderful Halloween …read more Continue reading Spooky Coffin Bell Spooks Passers By on Halloween
Old TeleTypes and even typewriters had bells. Real bells. So that ASCII BEL character is supposed to make an honest to goodness ringing sound. While some modern terminals make a beep from the computer speakers, it isn’t the same. [Tenderlove] must agree, because the turned a Microchip USB to I2C …read more
All the hardcore geeks have alarm clocks where the bell striker is a hard disk read head… or at least they’ll be building them after seeing this. [Senile Data Systems] created an industrial voltage alarm clock out of decade counters that looks like it was unearthed from a fallout shelter …read more
Continue reading Breathtaking Alarm Clock Looks Like it Came From a 1960 Fallout Shelter
We think of the mobile phone — well, what we would call a cell phone — as something fairly modern. Many of us can still remember when using a ham radio phone patch from your parked car would have people staring and murmuring. But it turns out in the late …read more
Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Mobile Phones 1940s Style
Incorrect charges and non-disclosure of terms were the two most popular complaints customers had, according to a new federal report. Continue reading Customer Complaints About Telecoms Are Up 44% In Canada
Adam Lackman ran TVAddons, a site hosting unofficial addons for Kodi media player. A legal team representing powerful telecom and media companies—Bell and Rogers included—searched his home and sued him for piracy. Now, he’s fighting to make it to trial. Continue reading What Happens When Telecom Companies Search Your Home for Piracy
They adorn the ends of Cat5 network patch cables and the flat satin cables that come with all-in-one printers that we generally either toss in the scrap bin or throw away altogether. The blocky rectangular plugs, molded of clear plastic and holding gold-plated contacts, are known broadly as modular connectors. They and their socket counterparts have become ubiquitous components of the connected world over the last half-century or so, and unsurprisingly they had their start where so many other innovations began: from the need to manage the growth of the telephone network and reduce costs. Here’s how the modular connector …read more
Continue reading The Modular Connector and How It Got That Way