Richard asked: Speak of Bell modems, does anyone have a timeline or reference for modem equipment before the phone system was broken up and anyone was allowed to make them? Wikipedia has an entry for the Bell 103 300bps modem, which they say was released in 1962. There is also an entry for the Bell 202 1200bps modem with no date reference. Does anyone else have more complete information about modems before the diversity of manufacturers entered the scene? -- Can't help you on the official time line. But I can put dates to my first contacts with them. I helped build a system for the IRS that used the Bell 101. This was in the fall of 1963. We had both Bell 301's and 103's in the lab. And retrofitted the 101's to 301's early in 1964. All of these units were transistor based. The first remote terminal systems we shipped to DARPA used racks of 101's driving teletypes. This was also late 1963. The first non-Bell data set I worked on was in 1967. It was a mature design, IC based, high volume, so probably started in 1966. Billy