Do you want sending some digital data on the public telephone network? Begin from your dining room table.

In the 40s the mathematician George Stibitz developed the idea of multiple access to a computer. On September 11, 1940 Stibitz arranged to have a computer connected from the Bell Labs of New York by telephone lines (28-wire teletype cable) to a teletype unit installed in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. This experiment,  named Digital Subset,  prepared the ground for the birth of the computer modems.In fact in 1978 Dennis C. Hayes and Dale Heatherington founded the D.C. Hayes Associates on a dining room table in Hayes’ home, where they started with a modest $5000 investment and boot-strapped the company to become the leader in the industry of the personal-computer modems. Initially the modem kits were packaged and shipped from Dennis Hayes house.  A couple of assemblers were hired and fully assembled units were built on Dennis’ dining room table.

Dennis C. Hayes working team (Micromodem II)

The company was soon well known for the Smartmodem, which introduced a control language Standard AT for operating the functions of the modem via the serial interface to the data terminal equipment, in contrast to manual operation with front-panel switches. In 1979  the company introduced the 300 bit/s Micromodem 100 for S-100 bus computers and the Micromodem II for the Apple II that used an external “microcoupler” to connect to telephone lines. The sales grew  up and  in 1980 the company changed its name to Hayes Microcomputer Products, under which it operated for most of its history. When Dennis Hayes decided to improve the performance of the each product and he was deeply involved in a new project called ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), he asked for the cooperation of the Bell companies. The Bell companies promised cooperation, but they lied and cheated Dennis Hayes.  He bet the company on ISDN, but because the bad cooperation of the Bell companies, the 7th of april 1999 he had to sell the assets of the Hayes Corporation  to the Zoom Telephonics.  Today the modems are  fully  installed in the most of the computers in the world for getting  connected to INTERNET by several Wired or Wireless Network Technologies.

Smart Modem Hayes