Question Ancient computer peripheral: the acoustic coupler

[80251]

I only saw one of these devices when I was in middle school in the "computer lab". It was used to connect to a remote host via a dumb, green-screen terminal. I don't even know how fast the connection was, but I'm sure it was painfully slow - maybe 300 baud. Practically anyone could type faster than the connection could respond. Much more sophisticated modems that came out some 15 years later could xmit @ 56.6kbs -- and those modems could cost upwards of $200 -- ~$463 in today's dollars. Acoustic coupler: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/41824/Anderson-Jacobson-A211-Acoustic-Coupler/

 

[Paperdoc]

Yeah, I used one of these in the 1970's. I'm pretty sure 300 baud is right.

Most people do not realize that the famous IBM Selectric typewriter with the interchangeable "golf ball" type sphere was designed as a computer I/O device that would print much faster than a normal typewriter, but was smaller and quieter than a Line Printer. I used terminals based on that design for accessing a system in the APL language running on a central IBM 360 /50 machine. That language was designed for interactive use, not punched card submission. Normally several terminals were in one central room for general use. But we had one by itself in a Chemistry Dept. undergraduate lab, using one of these modems and a landline phone to access the mainframe.

 

[80251]

I learned to touch type on the IBM Selectric. I was one of only two guys in my high school typing class. Those typewriters were really expensive back in the day.
An IBM 360, that's going back a ways. Did you ever see one of the infamous IBM 30/30 "Winchester" hard drives?
I remember the industrial sized dot matrix printer the mainframers had, that printer seemed to always have print jobs running.