TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: History of Hayes Modem

Re: History of Hayes Modem

Justa Lurker (JustaLurker@att.net)
Sat, 14 Jan 2006 13:32:14 GMT

>>>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My question would be, _who_ was the
>>>> inventor of the MO(dulate)DEM(modulate) in that case?

I'd suggest investigating the history of:

"voice frequency telegraph" (a-k-a "voice frequency carrier telegraph")

technology which is officially defined in various standard glosaries as
'A method of multiplexing one or more dc telegraph channels onto a
nominal 4-kHz voice frequency channel.' Sounds like a modem to me :-)

In fact, I would contend that the earliest practical 'modems' were to be
found in the context of the "harmonic telegraph" ... see this brief
interesting article [for example]

http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/harmonic.html

dating back to early 1880s. The previous work of Elisha Gray and his
'electro-harmonic' (or 'electro acoustic multiplex telegraph') is
referenced there. Also, it appears that Gray's competitor Alexander
Graham Bell did some seminal work in this area too based upon

http://repo-nt.tcc.virginia.edu/book/chap3/chapter3sec4.html

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