Video

AT&T Deathly Commercials (AT&T Merlin)

clickfoLeave a comment

In the mid to late 1980s, AT&T used what I would characterize as deathly commercials and using fear from alleged real-life experiences. Another part of this series was the AT&T Spirit system (see here)

“Turned out our new phone system hadn’t had the whole place intimidated. No one could make it work   Supposed to make us look good, we were coming cross looking like a bunch of clowns.”

The style of the ad was very film like, with a tight shot and a loose pedestal so the camera looked as if it was a person looking at the individual. The last 10 seconds had a dark soundtrack with a stern warning “that your business phone is your business lifeline.”

From my knowledge, it is unclear what system or vendor AT&T was attacking (or attempted to mock). As previously posted, the AT&T Merlin was more designed for simplicity over any technical features, that may had not been available for all customers who would connect to the phone company for a decade longer. While AT&T is mocked by some, that marketed “Fisher Price toys” of phone systems; there is some sign that they had decent market of the US Small business market, leaving the others to the consolidated Japanese market as well as Nortel.

On a sidenote: I feel that such campaigns have not only been long gone, and since the advent and aggressive marketing borderline on backstabbing, “Cloud PBX” and Voice over IP have ultimately made business telephony less of a “lifeline” with no responsibility to defend it.

Since the 2000s, with Millenials and Gen Z coming to age, and their “Meh” attitude, if a call is dropped, they just move on, forget 5 minutes ago while they don’t have attention to realize why a call was dropped in the first place. (The attention deficit and the retention deficit that makes these people not function well in a real business world in 2019.) Not to mention they assume everyone has caller ID and insist a “missed” call is good enough for them.

#

Basics on the ROLM CBX

clickfoLeave a comment

This film made c 1980 shows how the ROLM CBX works. The CBX stood for the Computerized Branch Exchange and it differed from other phone systems that signaled the devices and machines differently. ROLM didn’t care about “dumbing down” the content to make it easier to understand. Despite the cute character, the intent in these engineering focused companies was to keep it highly technical.

For whatever reason the company did very well until the suits from New York decided to go into phone systems and then destroy it within several years, just like what AT&T did to NCR in the early 1990s. IBM (yes that same IBM that believed people needed to be “computer literate” to use a large mainframe) really lacked the telephony and innovative literacy to help pull them out into their misery in the early 1990s.

Siemens would later buy them out and use ROLM’s brains and talent to replace their existing offerings and inherited many of ROLM’s designs, and other tangible assets that made ROLM what they were for a period of time.

*

Hey SEOs! We're seeking non pricky engineers/professional information services professionals, non technical people, AND girl power! females from 18 to 35 too!

Video: Ericsson Computer/Telephone Terminal

clickfo

 

This is pretty rad for the 1980s. Just you need to have a supporting PBX or ESS service. The comments on the Instagram post from at-neontalk was amusing if you do not know what a “terminal” is…

The first digital like carphone can be seen near the end of the byte.

Glad to be a phone dude!

The Makings of a Telephone Museum

clickfo

In this ten minute video you can see me build out the museum that took nearly six months from vision to completion. This timelapse video of nearly two full hours during two days in January and earlier this month showed how much work it took to put in the hardware  bought from the local Home Depot using a Closetmaid solution as well as swapping out the telephone sets and finalizing the look.

More to come.

*

 

Phun: “Rejected by 7 Different Technologies”

clickfo

Since answering machines had such an important role before voicemail, and even when voicemail began in commercial markets in the mid 1980s, it was designed almost as a fancy answering machine and it’s Saint Valentine’s Day, why don’t we just have some fun and quote movies like He’s Just Not That Into You and relive the days of romantic rejections 25 years ago

Continue reading →

Video: Nortel Ad – Circa 2000

clickfo

I was on a walk in my town for the first time in many months (feels like years in this long summer that never ends.) I passed by a biker going against me on the sidewalk who had a T-shirt that said  “What do you want the Internet to be?”

The T-shirt was by Nortel during the late 90s, the turn of year 2000. These ads ran from 1999 to 2000 when Nortel actually made their first major mainstream ad campaign that was outside the traditional trade papers. (I also bet The Beetles made some nice royalties beyond the typical SESAC dues!) This also followed after a major acquisition of Bay Networks, once located at the headquarters where Avaya is today in Santa Clara, California. Bay Networks had a large presence in Massachusetts (where the biker probably worked for or a friend of his or his spouse.) If you go on US Route 3 South before  Interstate 95 Route 128  you’ll see Avaya’s offices there. Prior to the Nortel acquisition Avaya got out of most of their New England offices and or plants.

This campaign didn’t help much because the rise of Cisco (I think in retrospect, the “rise” was inflated, through a lot of backroom deals, long lunch hours with CIOs and other weird things that made Cisco go to the top.)

Sadly, even though I dislike Nortel 9 times out of 10, it was watching a Greek tragedy that destroyed the company; first having a top heavy headcount (always a bad sign), second was a very rough transition from a mainframe type of technology (TDM) to less hardware dependent business (IP.) For whatever reason Cisco was able to sell tons of boxes and make a killing, allegedly in the first decade of the new Millenium. (Cisco’s success outside of IP Telephony is yet to be challenged publicly outside of niche blogs.) Factor in Enron-like accounting scandals and the infamous bankruptcy, Nortel had a lot of issues.

I’m not sympathizing with Nortel, many legacy telecom companies were unable to make the same profits in an IP/Internet based world. Well not until the concept of “cloud” based services where they could get a reoccurring revenue stream. Services were cut among all companies and even in the last 15 years, hardware maintenance was still needed, but good luck if you had a major bug and dealing with the vendor directly.

It was interesting to see still see things, like the biker in the Nortel swag in 2015.

My Collection: (Kellogg) ITT/Cortelco 564 Multiline Rotary Telephone

clickfo

This latest find – was on Etsy of all places (and not eBay!) In this video I produced, I unbox, open up, add-stations to the Avaya PBX, and then tried to do test calls and dials to the system. The only line that has a lamp is the Line 1 position and typically that requires a power adjunct to provide additional power for lamp status. However near the end of this video, I redid the entire analog board (the extension numbers and set type through the system access terminal) and set them all to 500 (with no MW lamp settings) and wola the Line 1 was lit. However it never went out. And it still hasn’t ring. And the Hold button has a function like the Release key as calls just drop like a Nortel set!

I’ve watched this video before taking this to air, and my gawd, I am the worst on camera talent, the more I am on camera, the more I want to be behind it at all times!

Found this on AmadolynCozyCottage on Etsy again thanks for this great find!