An Experimental Teleterminal - The Software Strategy

A teleterminal is defined to be a piece of equipment that merges the functionality of the traditional tele phone with that of a computer terminal. It is characterized by: (i) A traditional telephone facility (ii) Internal intelligence (Hi) A data communication facility (iv) A general-purpose display (v) Dynamic labeling of buttons (soft keys). This merger of functionality has been seen to be synergistic. One such teleterminal, whose hardware is described in Ref. 1 and in the companion paper,2 is illustrated in Fig. 1. 121 122 THE BELL SYSTEM TECHNICAL JOURNAL, JANUARY 1 983 The construction of and, more significantly, the experimentation with such a teleterminal is part of a large-scale, long-range research investigation into the systems, software, and applications aspects of telecommunications. Cognitive and social implications are a significant part of the study. An evolving futuristic "test-bed" environment1 currently consists of a highly reliable host computer (a three-processor Tandem-16), an "intelligent" digital switching office,4 and a collection of teleterminals. A number of systems-level principles have been uncovered in the course of this research and appropriate papers have been submitted to and published in appropriate journals. It is the purpose of this paper and its companion to describe the equipment used in this research and thereby serve as a common reference for those other papers of a more general nature. Compatibility with today's environment would be of major importance if a real product were being described, but it is of little consequence in a research environment, except that it simplifies the dissemination of teleterminals to interested people.