Relay computerswhy so few 19

I think that is probably a very accurate buttessment!

In that same time frame I and a friend who owned a small telco (which is now a much much larger telco) were thinking of designing either our own switch or at least some of the peripheral equipment (ANI add on for existing switching systems was a big deal at that time). We didn't have the resources, but for anyone who did it was certainly the right idea!

As it turned out, for him at least, he'd already had one of those bright ideas that decades later paid off. At a time when the entire idea was simply insane (1963), he and two others filed for the rights to install telephones in about a dozen small remote villages (GTE had two larger villages already, and they filed on everything in between). They did it as much to annoy GTE as anything else. Ten years later the Alaska Public Utilities Commission decided to "encourage" such ideas, and almost over night their joke turned into that figurative gold mine we'd all like to own.

My friend is now in his mid-70's, his two partners have long since pbutted away, and I think he's still grinning at the screech that GTE put up (the owned "McGrath, Bethel and surrounding areas" and had buttumed it include the 250 miles inbetween too).

Me, I've got about $10 and twenty-five cents to my name...

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