The Telephone..

Alexander Graham Bell was a Scot, and had he developed the telephone and made the first long distance call from the UK, we could have laid claim to it being a British invention. But it was not to be. The idea was in his head and didn’t come to anything until he reached Ontario Canada.

Anyway, the telephone in question is the 712/722 Trimphone. When these were announced in 1964, everybody wanted one, but unlike today’s phones, a man from the GPO had to come and install it, so the wait could be a long one. The wait was worth it because the 712 was the hippest thing on the planet.

This is the info card for the 722. Note the exciting colour range. These phones were very light and easy to carry, and they had as standard the world’s longest cable.For the first time, you could sit further away than six feet from the wall, but it’s weight worked against it too. Dialling the phone resulted in it sliding around and being small, there was not a lot to hold. It was the first phone that didn’t ring too. It warbled, but we still used the phrase ‘I’ll ring you’.

The other issue was the luminous dial. Seen originally as a good idea, when users found out that it was radioactive, albeit very mildly radioactive, that was enough for people to take a step back.

Eventually, the Trimphone turned to tone dialling and then user pluggable (8766/8786) in the late 70’s and early 80’s which overcame the radioactive element and having to wait forever to get a new style phone.

The Trimphone was a GPO telephone. Towards the end of its life, there was an influx of novelty phones, none of them authorised, and all resisted by the GPO as being incompatible with the existing lines.

British Telecom took over from the GPO, promising to make the British telephone system the best in the world, and with that promise came a whole range of BT approved novelty phones, some with advanced features for the time.

Alas, the swinging Trimphone was replaced as the standard telephone, but for a few years blazed the first designer phone trail.

If you want to see what followed it, see here..

http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/phones_1980on.htm

Light where you need it - any angle..

Recognise this?

It is the model 75 Anglepoise table lamp, designed and developed originally by George Carwardine, a car suspension designer in the UK. These lamps are not cheap but there is no other multi-position lamp that does it as well as an original Anglepoise.

The original appeared in 1932 and could only handle a 40w light bulb. These days, they have LEDs, but apart from some styling changes, they have remained pretty much the same. You can even buy remakes of the original 1227 design. How cool is that?

Where wouldn’t you find one of these? Anywhere where there is no electricity supply. They were and are still used in homes, offices, hospitals, workshops etc.

Floor mounts, table stands, desk clamps, even a wall mount, there is always a way to make one of these lamps work for you.

Variations of this type of lamp have appeared, but none will be as versatile or long lasting as a real Anglepoise. A full range of spares is available for them too, so you will never have to commit an Anglepoise to the landfill like you do for so many of the other cheap look-a-likes.

For more, see here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglepoise_lamp and for the current range.. http://www.anglepoise.com/

BBC and the Acorn..

Did you know that while other computer companies were struggling for traction in the early days, the BBC sponsored Acorn Computer Company was leading the world?

Did you also know that an offshoot of the original Acorn Computer Company, ARM, is into processors (CPUs) and is bigger than Intel? ARM = Acorn RiSC Machines.

People always associate computers with the USA, but the first useful computer was made and used in Britain? It was used at Bletchley Park to help break the Axis Powers codes.

The Acorn team in Cambridge UK were a bright bunch. Look what they produced over time.. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/sec/79/Acorn-Computers/

The most famous is the BBC Micro which was the mainstay of computer learning in British schools. Click on the BBC B Micro in the link I gave you above to see the huge array of software and connectibles for the machine. There was absolutely nothing like them anywhere else.

The language was BBC BASIC, a step up from regular BASIC which embodied commands not seen in the original. It made the language very powerful indeed while still remaining simple to use. Even I managed to produce a few games and bits, even an assembly language clock which stayed on top of whatever was on-screen. Well, not quite always. The trouble is that I was no programmer and didn’t have the mindset to sit for hours bug checking, but what this period did teach me is how everything comes together.

I have more sympathy for the programmers when their stuff fails to interact with whatever else is on a computer. I know how difficult it is to test a program or utility and ever guarantee that it will not affect anything else that is running..

So what beat Acorn and why are they still not making computers? This is a company that built stuff to a high standard. There was nothing flimsy in their lineup. The 90’s saw the rise of the cheap and very often flimsy IBM clones, a market in which the Acorn way of doing things could not compete.

The Archimedes RiSC computer and the associated operating system was way ahead, closer to midrange business machines than for home or school use. Sadly, production of computers was halted.

This is not the end of the story.

The ARM processor which spawned the Archimedes range is a very powerful, very fast, and very power efficient processor, so much so that it is ideal for use in cellphones, PDA’s, tablets, essentially anything where mobility and performance are necessities. The computers may have disappeared, but the technology is alive and well, and huge business for what is left of the original Acorn company.

Also, the Domesday Project of 1986 has been saved from destruction. The laser disks upon which all of the data was stored eventually suffer what is called ‘laser rot’. Very few could ever afford the system on which the Domesday Project ran, but it is now being transferred from the laser disks and updated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday