From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Looking backward
Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 12:12:05 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

----- Original Message -----
From: <ronkean at juno.com>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 4:14 AM
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Looking backward

>
> On Fri, 23 Aug 2002 00:12:29 -0400 (EDT) "Keith F. Lynch"
> <kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:
>
> > The music machine was basically a telephone.  "Cable radio" in
> > modern
> > parlance.
>
> It probably did not require a great imagination to think of that
idea,
> since the Bell telephone was invented in 1876, and by 1887 its use
was
> well established in some cities.  Some early demonstrations of the
> telephone involved the remote performance of music.  The aspect I
found
> interesting was the idea of adjusting the volume by turning a screw,
> since that implied having controlled amplification.  I have heard
that
> around 1900 there was a wired music broadcasting system in Budapest,
> music by telephone as it were.  But I wonder how amplification could
have
> been accomplished in 1900, absent vacuum tubes.

The screw may have only *diminished* the volume being transmitted --
not increased it.
>
>  He also described what he called "credit cards," but
> > which
> > actually worked more like debit cards.
> >
>
> The cards were made of paper or cardboard, with a field for
punchouts.
> When a product was bought in a state store, the purchase price was
> deducted from the card by punching out the appropriate amount.
Again,
> not much imagination required, because train conductors in 1887
punched
> the passengers' tickets to cancel them and prevent multiple use.

Cards with numbers on them which are punched out progressively as
things are purchased or used with the cards have been around a long
time.  I seem to recall we had them for our school cafeteria when I
was a boy, more than half a century ago.

--Ted White