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Histor
of
Modems
of being
online
George Stibitz
connected a
New Hampshire
teletype to a
computer in
New York City
by a subscriber
telephone line
in
1940
Non-Bell companies began selling computer modems. One of the most notable
for our purposes was the Hayes 80-103A, a 300-baud Bell 103A-compatible
modem that happened to be the first modem created for a personal computer.
Dale Heatherington (shown here) and Dennis C. Hayes designed it for S-100
bus computers of the day, such as the Altair 8800 and the IMSAI 8080.
The land of
56kbps
In the late 1990s,
modem
manufacturers
bumped up
against the
theoretical and
legal limits of
analog telephone
data transfer
speeds.
USB modems
Though dial-up modems
were once standard in
PCs, they are becoming
scarce due to the
predominance of
broadband internet
access. Companies still
sell modems that connect
through external serial
ports and internal PCI
slots, but one common
approach is to plug in a
tiny USB modem (like the
ones shown here) when
you need dial-up.
Beyond dial-up
Having reached the limits of analog modem technology,
companies tried various new approaches to sate the public's
demand for ever-faster modem speeds. The first alternative was
all-digital phone lines (ISDN), though their expensiveness limited
their popularity. In the early 2000s, modems that worked over
cable TV lines won a following.
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/getting-connected-a-history-of-modems657479
http://www2.rad.com/networks/2005/modems/history.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem
http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/history-modems-60-years-going-online573¤t=2&last=1#slideshowTop