People take it for granted but it’s actually such a cool bit of engineering, we had a world-changing technology, but it would take decades to get lines set up and wouldn’t really be too useful until then. But engineers realized by literally playing and listening to beeps over an existing widespread utility in phone lines, you’ve just given almost everyone access to the internet overnight, with almost 0 infrastructure cost.
Anyone who actually used it was painfully aware of that fact. If anyone wanted to make a phone call, no more internet for you, and in some cases incoming phone calls could bounce you offline. Some people paid for a dedicated phone line for the internet but that was extremely rare for personal use.
I’m a millennial and baaaarely avoided dial-up, it was phasing out in the late 90s but I still have the sound burned into my head so I assume my parents used dial up when I was super young.
This pic is an acoustic coupler, which played sounds and listened to them from the handset. Modems would connect directly to the phone circuit, bypassing actual sound waves (although they did still have a little speaker so the you could hear what they received).
People take it for granted but it’s actually such a cool bit of engineering, we had a world-changing technology, but it would take decades to get lines set up and wouldn’t really be too useful until then. But engineers realized by literally playing and listening to beeps over an existing widespread utility in phone lines, you’ve just given almost everyone access to the internet overnight, with almost 0 infrastructure cost.
Today I found out dial-up literally used the phone lines.
All the pieces were there, I just never thought about it.
Found the gen Z kid lol.
Anyone who actually used it was painfully aware of that fact. If anyone wanted to make a phone call, no more internet for you, and in some cases incoming phone calls could bounce you offline. Some people paid for a dedicated phone line for the internet but that was extremely rare for personal use.
I’m a millennial and baaaarely avoided dial-up, it was phasing out in the late 90s but I still have the sound burned into my head so I assume my parents used dial up when I was super young.
This pic is an acoustic coupler, which played sounds and listened to them from the handset. Modems would connect directly to the phone circuit, bypassing actual sound waves (although they did still have a little speaker so the you could hear what they received).