Bell telephone magazine (1922) (14756063795)

Identifier: belltelephonemag4344amerrich (find matches)

Title: Bell telephone magazine

Year: 1922 (1920s)

Authors: American Telephone and Telegraph Company American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Information Dept

Subjects: Telephone

Publisher: (New York, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., etc.)

Contributing Library: Prelinger Library

Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

Text Appearing Before Image:

,credit status or loan payment record. This is the shape of things to come,and the arrival of those things dependson many factors. It depends, for instance,on how quickly, if at all, a local bankconverts to computer operation and de-cides to offer this kind of service to itscustomers. Several banks already arestudying the possibility. We in the Bell System expect thattouch-tone phones for this use will beavailable in 1966. Of course, as we havealready pointed out, telephone centraloffices must be modified to handle thenew service on a general basis. However,if a bank wanted to install the equipmentright now to provide these services, thecentral office would not have to beequipped for touch-tone. Auxiliarytouch-tone push button sets could beassociated with the familiar rotary-dialphones until such time as the centraloffice is modified. In that case, the dial Retail store: clerk might call central com-puter to record account number, price, mer-chandise code, clerk number, credit rating.

Text Appearing After Image:

phone would be used to call through tothe computcM-, then the touch-tonephone would take over in feeding datato the computer. The possibilities of touch-tonk phone-computer service are virtually unlimited.For example, information retrieval sys-tems might be developed for students toobtain facts from a librarys computer.(See Changing Attitudes Toward Col-lege Communications, BTM, Autumn1964.) Doctors could get the latest wordon treatment of a disease from a medicalcenters computer. Or it could be possibleto literally shop by phone—order mer-chandise directly from a stores computersystem. The customer would simply usehis TOUCH-TONE phone at home to trans-mit his identification, credit card numberand the quantity and identification num-ber of the desired merchandise. The storewould bill him later, probably by mail.This electronic extension of his fingersand feet could do everything except wrapthe package for him—and it might evendo that. Telephones and computers will prob-ably never

bell telephone magazine 1964 bell telephone magazine 1965 internet archive document belltelephonemag 4344 amerrich book illustrations telephone bell telephone company american telephone and telegraph company history of technology images from internet archive

1922

Prelinger Library

http://commons.wikimedia.org/

public domain