[plug] Modem souper survey

[ryan at is.as.geeky.as]

Ryan's mildly interesting but mostly poinless facts # 137:

While replying to Harry about modems I discoverd on the Spirit Technologies
(Mike Bourne Electronics) website that they are the creator of those noisy
pedestrian crossing things we all bash when we walk past (if I am thinking
of the same thing)

"Amongst our early projects was the development of the beeper device at
traffic lights for the assistance of visually impaired people, (now deployed
world-wide) followed shortly thereafter by a personal computer based
text-to-speech synthesiser. The next step was modem technology, simplifying
and automating the connection and interchange of data for personal
computers, via the telephone line. "

Don't know about anyone else - but I didn't know that :)

Ryan