Shades of Grey

In the phone business, I’m the proverbial poacher turned gamekeeper. I used to work in the supply side of the Telecoms industry and now work on the user side. Knowing where some of the (old) bodies are buried, I like to pop down to the “Poachers Inn” just to keep abreast of the reality behind the spin. One of the various trade mags has gone digital and perusing a copy today online, my attention was drawn to an interesting article about the early days of answering machines. (Note- opens as some browsing application).

It seems that three students went into business back in 1968 and having to occasionally attend lectures, they thought they’d get an answering machine. However, forty years ago, BT (or the Post Office as it was then) had the monopoly on the network and called the shots. When they looked into getting a machine, they found they could only rent on on a long contract for £35 a quarter, more than £400 in today’s money. Another stumbling block was that you had to wait a fortnight for the Post office to send someone to replace the fixed terminal block with a (chunky) jack plug connector.

With a bit of lateral thinking, they eventually tracked down something from Japan which they called the Juliphone. This was a modern day answering machine but somewhat heath-robinson in its approach. Rather than connecting into the network, it accoustically coupled via the handset, had a microphone to detect the ringing and a mechanical lever to simulate lifting (and replacing) the receiver. The recording was a reel to reel tape recorder and the outgoing message was on a tape loop. Primitive, but it worked, it even had a (crude) remote control and they could sell them for £145, only slightly more than a year’s rental from the opposition. It only worked with one type of phone (the BT 706) but you could only really get one type of phone anyway then for a small business.

It seems the Post Office were not amused though and threatened to cut off anyone found using one, despite the connection to the network being non-electrical. (The typical arrogance of what was a Civil Service monopoly, the legacy of which still distorts the UK market in a regulated quasiopoly). The three lads got round that by a clever bit of wordage- they offered to refund the money to the customer, less £1 a week of previous use. They never had to make a refund!

(Telephone Anoraks will point out that model 746 was introduced in 1967 but I’m sure it fitted the Juliphone just as well/badly!)

I struggled to find an image and in the end clipped it from the Comms Business article, well worth a read.

(There is one in the science museum, you can see a rotatable quicktime of it here, courtesy of Connected Earth, BT’s virtual museum. Warning, not a site to spend two minutes on if you are in a rush!)

The three lads renamed the Business Storacall, still going today, still in the call recording business and with many more strings to their bow.