Connecting Computers and People Since 1984
Long before WiFi and when ethernet cables were emerging, the Telecommunications Users Group was having fun connecting computers with phone lines.
Early computers were incompatible with each other, but TUG members over came the lack of standardization by implementing the same communication method between computers. Often the connections were on phone lines.
On each end of the wire was a modem: MOdulater-DEModulator. This device converted a computer’s 1 and 0 bits into sounds to be transmitted through the phone line. The receiving modem would turn the audio back into the digital 1 and 0 bits to create text and the files we still use today, such as spreadsheets and word processing documents.
The earliest modems transferred audio to and from telephone handsets as show in this picture from an early user.
More to come: This site under construction.