TELECOM Digest Mon, 21 Feb 94 09:21:00 CST Volume 14 : Issue 94 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The "Blue Pages" -- Are Yours in Good Shape? (Will Martin) A.G. Bell's Last Living Grandson is Dead at 87 (Nigel D. Allen) Intelligent Network Services (Wayne King) Dvorak Offer Redux (Cliff Sharp) Shortage of Prefixes in 800? (Carl Moore) Caller-ID Question (Scott Schell) Percentage of DTMF Circuits (Thomas Hinders) Power Supply For Digital Cordless Phone (Flying Dutchman) Third-Party Billing (Carl Moore) Get Paid For Receiving Commercial Email (Sheldon W. Hoenig) Re: Internet Costs and Software Are Free (John Galloway) Re: Internet Costs and Software Are Free (Chaim Frenkel) Re: Telephone Number History (Carl Moore) Re: Telephone Number History (David Breneman) Re: Caller ID in Russia (For Curious) (John R. Levine) Re: Cell Phone Welcome Message (Mark Earle) Re: AT&T Directory Assistance Now Includes Addresses (jdl@wam.umd.edu) Re: Priorities (Andrew C. Green) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and GEnie. Subscriptions are available at no charge to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu * The Digest is compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson Associates of Skokie, Illinois USA. We provide telecom consultation services and long distance resale services including calling cards and 800 numbers. To reach us: Post Office Box 1570, Chicago, IL 60690 or by phone at 708-329-0571 and fax at 708-329-0572. Email: ptownson@townson.com. ** Article submission address only: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu ** Our archives are located at lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. TELECOM Digest is gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom. It has no connection with the unmoderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom.tech whose mailing list "Telecom-Tech Digest" shares archives resources at lcs.mit.edu for the convenience of users. Please *DO NOT* cross post articles between the groups. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 05:07:57 CST From: Will Martin Subject: The "Blue Pages" -- Are Yours in Good Shape? I recently had the need to look up some Missouri state government phone numbers in the Southwestern Bell Greater St. Louis Area white pages telephone book section that has blue edges to the paper and is called the "Blue Pages"; this lists Federal, State, County, and City offices. I noticed, while doing this, that the listings were rather sloppily formatted, sometimes contained out-of-date material, and were incomplete. Unfortunately, there is no number given in the directory to call to report errors or omissions or problems in the directory itself. After some effort, and telephone tag thru the SW Bell bureaucracy, I was able to contact an office at Southwestern Bell that would accept some degree of responsibility for this section. (They still disclaimed actual control, referring instead to a "publications office" which you cannot call directly because it never deals with the public.) I was able to get them to agree to correct some obvious errors -- for example, the name "Mel Carnahan" (Missouri's current Governor) has been listed as "Lieutenant Governor" in both the 1993 and new 1994 editions! But the section on state legislators was woefully incomplete and had someobvious formatting errors; they claimed they couldn't make this section complete on their own -- that each legislator had to contact them individually and request to be included! I considered THAT to be rather outrageous. There were other items, like the way St. Louis County was entered in the listings -- the address for the county government center is run together with the county name on the same line in the same typeface, so the column headings all say: ST LOUIS-COUNTY OF 41 SOUTH CENTRAL -- instead of: ST LOUIS-COUNTY OF 41 South Central -- and SW Bell insited that THAT was the way the county government had ordered it, and they couldn't change it. Hmmm ... Right... So I wrote a letter to my State Representative about it. (His name, and that of my State Senator, were among those omitted). In addition, I suggested that he could get the state Public Service Commission to promulgate an order to all telephone companies in the state to make an active effort to keep all "government" listings up-to-date and correct, as opposed to just passively waiting for changes from the offices themselves. After all, the whole purpose of these special "blue pages" government listings is to provide information and contact points to the public, and their accuracy is important in this regard. The telephone companies should automatically update such listings when elections or reorganizations change the data shown therein. He called me a few days later and told me that he was going to look into it and would see what SW Bell would do about it. Just yesterday, a person from SW Bell called me. It actually was one of the same people I had spoken to before and who had been relatively disinterested in trying to get the obvious errors corrected. A sudden transformation had overcome this person -- she was all eager about how this was going to be passed along to "higher levels" in SW Bell, and that they were going to make a great effort to clean up this section. She admitted there were many obvious problems and that they would be fixed. Well, we'll see -- there's a year until the new directory comes out. (I had started this effort after seeing how the same errors were in both the 93 and 94 editions.) But I found it amusing how rapidly this sudden attitudinal change had come about ... Also, this time there was no nonsense about how the mis-formatted entries were there "because the customer ordered it that way"; instead, this person stated that these listings were all "free". Somehow I doubt that -- I think these government offices are paying business rates for their service and are entitled to listings in the white pages just like any other business, so they are paying for the listing just as much as "Joe's Auto Repair" is... Anyway, I encourage all other TELECOM Digest readers to look at your local telephone books, and see how well and accurately the government offices are listed. If you see problems and obvious glaring errors, raise a fuss about them! Invoke the magic initials "PSC" (or "PUC" in some states) and see if that helps. Involve your state legislators, especially if their own listings are wrong or missing. It might keep them busy doing something helpful instead of what mischief they otherwise might spend their time doing ... :-) Regards, Will ------------------------------ From: ndallen@io.org Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 05:55:16 -0500 Subject: A.G. Bell's Last Living Grandson is Dead at 87 Organization: Internex Online (io.org) Data: 416-363-3783 Voice: 416-363-8676 The following obituary appeared in {The New York Times} on Thursday, February 17. Alexander Graham Bell Fairchild, 87, Dies Alexander Graham Bell Fairchild, a research entomologist at the University of Florida and the last living grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, died last Thursday at his home in Gainesville, Flordia. He was 87. The cause was cancer, the university said. Mr. Fairchild, who was known as Sandy, spent almost 30 years in Central America and South America studying the role of insects in disease. Since 1970, he had been a research professor of entomology at the University of Florida and a research associate at the Florida State Collection of Arthropods in Gainesville. He was the author of more than 140 articles in scientific journals and was a member of the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was named entomologist of the year in 1968 by the Entomological Society of America. Mr. Fairchild is survived by his wife, Elva, and a daughter, Alice Fairchild, both of Gainesville; a son, David, of Carmel Valley, Calif., and a grandson. Nigel Allen ndallen@io.org ------------------------------ From: ac497@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Wayne King) Subject: Intelligent Network Services Reply-To: ac497@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Wayne King) Organization: The National Capital FreeNet Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 16:08:23 -0500 I am looking for detailed information on the features provided by Intelligent Network and Advanced Intelligent Network services. I would like to know where I can get information on this topic. Thanks in advance. Wayne King Kylain Inc. Phone: (613) 226-1250 2 Gurdwara Road Email: ac497@freenet.carleton.ca Suite 610, Fax: (613) 226-6854 Nepean, Ont., K2E 1A2 ------------------------------ Subject: Dvorak Offer Redux Date: Sun, 20 Feb 94 16:39:21 CST From: Cliff Sharp I hate to revive a painful subject, but... I switched to Sprint to get the modem, and in November I got a letter that I was to return telling them what kind of software I wanted for the modem. Due to messy filing practices, I didn't return it until December 27. Now, not having seen anything of the modem yet, I ask ... 1. How long did it take between your mailing the letter and your getting your modem? 2. Was it mailed, UPSed, or how was it shipped to you? 3. When and if I have to check up on it, does anyone have a copy of the letter showing the 800 number they listed for contacting them about the modem? TIA. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Feb 94 17:29:22 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Shortage of Prefixes in 800? In the messages about N00 prefixes, lincmad@netcom.com commented about seeing N0X/N1X prefixes in use for area 800 (tollfree calls). Yes, I have been seeing some of those, too. Someone else wondered if 800-NXX-XXXX could generalize to 800-XXX-XXXX (ditto for area 900), since there is no occasion to use less than the ten-digit number (including the area code) to reach any of them. A response said that a lot of local switches would block 800-0xx and 800-1xx (ditto for area 900), and it occurs to me: back in the 1970s, when 213 was the only area code having N0X/N1X prefixes, did a lot of local switches block 213-N0X and 213-N1X because they were "smart" enough to spot that 0 or 1 in the middle digit of what should be the prefix? (In a related story, I understand that many operators, especially on the East coast, didn't know about N0X/N1X prefixes until it became time for New York City to get such.) ------------------------------ From: sschell@sun.com (Scott Schell x8034) Subject: Caller-ID Question Reply-To: David_Wolfe@stortek.stortek.com Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc. Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 22:58:10 GMT I am trying to locate info re: Caller-ID. How does it work? How much digital, how much analog, how much Ma Bell? Where can I obtain the specification? I have voicemail/mbox in my computer and I would like to integrate Caller-ID function for database storage. Thanks, david wolfe Internet: David_Wolfe@stortek.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Caller-ID? Hmm ... isn't that some new feature the telephone company is offering these days? I think I have heard of it someplace. Maybe we should start a discussion thread about it here in the Digest ... PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 21 Feb 1994 07:28:09 EDT From: Hinders, Thomas Subject: Percentage of DTMF Circuits What percentage of the world's telephone voice circuits are DTMF? What percentage of the telephone instruments are DTMF? The reason I ask, is one of the proposals for routing inbound fax uses additonal digits after the # to provide routing information and it occured to me this solution would only work on DTMF capable circuits. Thanks, Tom Hinders/Soft-Switch +1 215 640 7487 (v/vm) +1 215 640 7511 (f) Internet: thinder@SSW.COM X.400: C=US A=Telemail P=Softswitch S=Hinders G=Thomas ------------------------------ From: mmeyer@sol.UVic.CA (Flying Dutchman) Subject: Power Supply For Digital Cordless Phone Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 02:29:03 GMT I need a 3 V supply for the "new" logic chips. I intend to use only three AA batteries. I have tried simulating a transistor/zener regulator but with a load of about 10 ohms, the voltage drops too low. I have not been able to find an IC regulator that will operate at such a low voltage (only a 0.6 V drop). A voltage divider setup is no good since the voltage will vary from about 3-4 V from the NiCAD batts. Any ideas? Please forward to my E-mail address ONLY. I don't want to switch batteries, or add more of them. Thanks, Mark ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 03:35:30 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Third-Party Billing I just had two unauthorized third-party charges removed from the AT&T portion of my C&P bill. Both were from the same telephone number, and both were to the same prefix in a different state. The AT&T service rep was even able to identify the people who have those three telephone numbers were (I did not recognize any of them). ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 04:24:49 EST From: Sheldon W. Hoenig Reply-To: hoenigs@gsimail.ddn.mil Subject: Get Paid For Receiving Commercial Email Pat: I received this posting. It sounds like "something for nothing" which means that there is a catch. From: Suarez C Industries Fri, 18 Feb 1994 10:36:58 -0500 To: Multiple recipients of list ANN-LOTS Subject: EPS Electronic Postal Service (EPS) Registration Information Here's how you can reduce commercial e-mail on the Internet and make money for yourself at the same time. Electric Postal Service will pay you money to receive commercial e-mail. EPS estimates you will be paid an average of 6.5 cents per commercial e-mail message. It is estimated that the average commercial e-mail receiver can make $200.00 to $500.00 a year and likely more. There is absolutely no charge, periodic charge, hourly charge or phone charge to receive or review EPS commercial e-mail. The sender bears all of the cost. You are provided with a free EPS mailbox and you may access this EPS mailbox through a toll free phone number so there are no phone line charges. In addition, as an e-mail receiver, EPS offers you many other new and innovative on-line services such as special interest bulletin boards, special interest conferencing, new services, information services, full Internet access including network Internet e-mail remote log-in, file transfer capability and much more. To receive more information about EPS, reply by: Sending e-mail to our internet address at eps@world.std.com Subject: EPS INFO Included your name and address. Or call 1-800-764-0009 and ask for operator OL12. Your free EPS e-mail post office box access information will be mailed to you. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sure does sound like a catch somewhere. Let's find out what it is ... I sent for my free information and sign up materials today. You do the same! Then, reports from everyone please based on your findings. Sounds like these folks are willing to pay you to help commercialize the net. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jrg@rahul.net (John Galloway) Subject: Re: Internet Costs and Software Are Free Organization: Galloway Research Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 23:14:12 GMT In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Chaim Frenkel : > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've always felt the same way where this > Digest was concerned. It is purely my contribution to the world to help > stamp out ignorance where the operation of telephone networks is concerned. > At least it began that way ... now I think I am a victim of my own success > where the Digest is concerned as the volume of traffic and the size of > the mailing list has increased far beyond what either Jon Solomon or I > expected or considered possible. Part of this of course is due to the > general increase in Internet usage; part perhaps due to my own efforts to > gateway the Digest to so many places. At that I was successful, and now > the mail is pouring in at such a volume that even a cursory examination > of much of it is difficult. And that is not good. I wish I could read > every peice of mail and use every peice of mail I receive, but until the > time comes that I can support myself independent of other outside jobs > -- if that time ever comes -- and work on the Digest eight or nine hours > per day -- which could easily be done now if resources were available -- > then I have to do what I can. I wish I lived high enough in the "Maslow > Hierarchy" to be able to afford it. PAT] Seems like it shouldn't be to difficult to insert a smart multiplexer in the stream somewhere that would parcel out submissions to multiple moderators and which would keep articles in the same thread going to the same moderator and parcel out new threads based on the article load of each moderator. On the other hand given that none of the news.software.* groups seemed appropriate for this comment, perhaps it won't be _quite_ that easy. (i.e. gee PAT get some help!!) internet jrg@galloway.sj.ca.us John R. Galloway, Jr 795 Beaver Creek Way applelink D3413 CEO...receptionist San Jose, CA 95133 Galloway Research (408) 259-2490 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, I *am* getting some help in the form of a monthly cash stipend starting soon. An organization which represents a large number of telephone companies has agreed to assist in funding TELECOM Digest (a not-for-profit educational activity registered in the State of Illinois) with a generous grant payable monthly. More details later. I won't exactly be singing 'Happy Days are Here Again' but I will be able to pay IBT on time each month. PAT] ------------------------------ From: chaim@vision.fsrg.bear.com (Chaim Frenkel) Subject: Re: Internet Costs and Software Are Free Date: 20 Feb 94 16:32:31 GMT Organization: Nonlinear Knowledge, Inc. In article TELECOM Digest Editor noted: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've thought about it, and probably would > then have them edit their articles and send them back to go into the > finished, published issue. One problem with this is the additional delay > it would cause in getting stuff out. I would have thought that it would REDUCE the delay. Consider a serial vs a parallel algorithm. The 'first' articles would be delayed longer than before, but the 'later' articles would be completed earlier than before. Chaim Frenkel On contract at: chaim@nlk.com chaim@fsrg.bear.com Nonlinear Knowledge, Inc. Bear Stearns & Co., Inc. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But therein lies the problem. I do not want the original article to be delayed. The original article should get out as quickly as possible. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 06:59:54 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Telephone Number History I don't quite understand the change from two letters + four numbers to two letters + five numbers for Louisville. I understand phone number lengths had to be standardized, but I heard that Cincinnati did that by inserting a 1 after the two-letter prefix. ------------------------------ From: daveb@jaws (David Breneman) Subject: Re: Phone Number History Date: 20 Feb 94 23:39:37 GMT Organization: Digital Systems International, Redmond WA Mark W. Schumann (catfood@rosebud.strinc.com) wrote: > My ma/pa-in-law still have one, although they're the only party. Ohio > Bell (Ameritech) has repeatedly said they'll take it away and start > charging them regular single-line rates but that hasn't happened yet. > What's funny is that they're in the 216-741 exchange, which is about > five miles out of downtown Cleveland. You would think this would have > been one of the first places to eliminate party lines. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If Ameritech wants to get them off the > single-party 'party line', the best way would be to (use their right to) > assign some other subscriber to the party, preferably some subscriber > with *a lot* of incoming and outgoing calls; maybe a family with a few > teenagers, etc. That would drive your in-laws/outlaws or whatever off > in a hurry, and Ohio Bell could smile sweetly and tell your relatives > how sorry they were to lose them as a party-line subscriber. :) PAT] My parents waited over ten years for a private line in the 206-858 exchange. Finally, somebody moved into the neighborhood (never found out who) who would leave his phone off the hook at night. If you picked up the phone, you could hear him snoring! When my parents complained repeatedly about the danger of this situation, the phone company (Island Empire, now Pacific Telecom) finally relented and gave them a private line, but charged $1.25 per month per mile for the distance between their house and the central (crossbar) switch in Gig Harbor (Washington -- near Tacoma). This was about 1979. David Breneman Email: daveb@jaws.engineering.dgtl.com System Administrator, Voice: 206 881-7544 Fax: 206 556-8033 Product Development Platforms Digital Systems International, Inc. Redmond, Washington, U. S. o' A. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They should have called their party line neighbor during the day and told him to quit doing that. Yes, you could call your party line neighbor on the phone even though the logical way of thinking was that if you went off hook, the line would become busy so how would you reach him ... during manual service days, if you simply asked for the other side of your party line (let's say you were 1234-J and party was 1234-W) then the response from the operator was 'line is busy', the same as if you asked for your own number by accident, and people would sometimes do that. The operator did not look at who was *calling* unless there was a billing function involved, she looked at who was *being called*; the (cord) tip to (jack) ring test would 'test busy' and that was her report ... bing! she was gone to handle another call. So you tipped her off by saying 'calling my party line, 1234-W', and she would say to hang up, let her ring it and pick up the phone again in maybe twenty seconds. She could then ring on the line (yours and party's would both ring) and if party answered she told them to hold on a couple seconds until you picked up again. Anyway, your parents should have called the snorer, and with the music of J.S. Bach's "Sleeper's Awake" playing sweetly in the background given him a piece of their mind. I wonder if the guy even knew he was on a party line or if he was just plain inconsiderate ... we used to have a guy here who was addicted to CB who stayed on the radio all day and all night. About once a week he would fall asleep while he was keyed up and the channel would be tied up all night long with his carrier. We could hear him snoring in the background also. In the days of party- line phones there were also inconsiderate people who did not want to be bothered with a phone call while they and their spouse engaged in sexual activity and they would leave the phone off the hook, too dumb to realize that their party line neighbors and all the operators got to listen in to that as well. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 06:34:00 EST From: johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine) Subject: Re: Caller ID in Russia (For Curious) Organization: I.E.C.C., Cambridge, Mass. It is my understanding that when dialing a toll call in Russia, you have to dial your own phone number after the desired number so that the exchange can tell who to bill it to. Is this what you're referring to as Caller-ID? The term has a somewhat different meaning in the U.S. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, jlevine@delphi.com, 1037498@mcimail.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 94 05:47:16 CST From: mearle@cbi.tamucc.edu (Mark Earle) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Welcome Message I experienced this the other day when leaving the SBMS service area north of San Antonio, TX and entering the Austin GTE Mobilnet area. The problem to me, is I quite often don't activate FMR. My spouse and telcom savvy associates know to reach me, dial the local roam port number, then my mobile number. In this way, they pay the LD part of the call; I pay airtime only. More importantly, though, if no one calls, no roam fees, since my phone didn't make any calls. Well, answering this greeting means getting hit for roam fees. Nice trick. Another reason sometimes not to activate FMR is the way FMR is done, it can lag behind you by 15-30 minutes. I'd rather have my associates try two or three roam port numbers, and get me, than be in the FMR black hole of no communications. I know, autonomous registration may solve the FMR boondoggle/kludge, but we're not destined to get it for awhile on the B side in South Texas. mwearle@mcimail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Feb 1994 18:53:05 -0500 From: Jonathan Subject: Re: AT&T Directory Assistance Now Includes Addresses Monty Solomon wrote: > In all states except New Jersey and Connecticut you can now request > phone number and/or address information from AT&T Directory > Assistance. > They can't currently provide addresses in New Jersey and Connecticut. Does AT&T really provide the Directory Assistance service, or does it go through the local telephone company? It would be disconcerting to know that AT&T knows everybody's address and telephone number, not just those of its own customers. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: DA comes from a variety of sources. In most cases the Bell Operating Company in that region handles it for both itself and on contract for the independent companies in the area and the various long distance carriers. AT&T runs (used to run?) 800 directory assistance and contracted it out to Southwestern Bell in East St. Louis, Illinois. There are still a few places where an inde- pendent telco does not contract with the BOC of record in the area to handle directory assistance. In those cases, when you call AC-555-1212 and ask for information in a certain town (where the independent telco operates) you'll note that the first operator who answers you says to hold on while she connects you to a second operator (at the independent telco). Most independents however have turned over all their operator and DA traffic to Bell for a lot cheaper cost than they could handle it themselves. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 21 Feb 1994 12:23:59 GMT From: "Andrew C. Green" Subject: Re: Priorities John Shaver writes: > A British humourist noted that if God had wanted us to have aeroplanes > he would not have given us the railroads. Cannot the same be said for > Telephone and Telegraph? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And ditto for computers versus the old > mechanical 'adding machines' of the 1940-50 era! PAT] Pardon a short digression from modern telecommunications here, but my circa-1940 Monroe calculating machine is in fine working order, thankyouverymuch. I rescued it from the old 123 N. Wacker building (in Chicago) just before demolition, and it now squats proudly on my desk next to my newfangled PC. The Monroe can add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers up to ten digits (after some dignified thought) with the same accuracy as my PC. Division is truly spectacular, with hundreds of motor-driven gears munching in unison to operate 30 registers in two rows on a traveling typewriter-like carriage. To "carryover" a digit, the carriage literally lifts up, drags itself sideways one column, and crashes back down to resume calculations. Repeating decimals can make it walk across the desk. You get a new understanding of where the term "number crunching" came from. Andrew C. Green ************************************* Datalogics, Inc. NOTE! Ignore any "From" headers above 441 W. Huron Direct all replies to acg@dlogics.com Chicago, IL 60610-3498 FAX: (312) 266-4473 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I loved my old Burroughs (punch down the buttons in each column; punch the appropriate operand key; yank the handle) 'adding machine'. It had about ninety keys on it, with eight columns (you could enter a number as high as 999,999.99 but answers could be as high as 9,999,999.99) and ten rows ranging from zero through nine which made eighty keys; then there were keys to add, subtract; keys for the sub-total, total and what they called NOP (or no-operation, meaning it printed on the tape what you entered, but for memo purposes only) and lock, which would retain whatever keys had been pressed in a locked position so you could pull the lever several times without having to repress the same keys over and over. In addition to the paper printout, a little glass window on the front let you look at the wheels inside with the digits printed on them as the calculations were being performed. To add 1234 plus 4321 you'd press 1-2-3-4 in the first four columns and the plus key; yank the handle forward and release it; then press 4-3-2-1 in the first four columns, the total key, and yank the handle forward a second time. To multiply you entered the number as above, pressed the locking key to retain the other keys in a down position) and pulled your lever back and forth the number of times needed. To divide, you pressed the number keys and the subtraction key and the lock key then pulled the lever back and forth, counting the number of pulls as you went along until the little glass window showed an insufficient amount to continue subtracting. The number of lever pulls was your answer and the 'remainder' was whatever the glass window and the print out tape said it was. The *electric* Burroughs was a great labor saving device. No more levers to pull and only a single matrix of numbers to be punched instead of several rows and columns to be used. It had absolutely no logic checking however, and if you attempted (for example) division by zero it saw no problems with that and would start its calculations with the gears inside chunking and spinning noisily, and it would continue all day until someone pulled the plug and pressed the reset button, which was basically a clutch to release the gears inside if they got locked up 'somehow'. Most multiplication and division problems were handled by the machine in thirty seconds or less. PAT] ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V14 #94 ***************************** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Downloaded From P-80 International Information Systems 304-744-2253