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Comment by aylons | Hacker News Reader

Good catch, but it was actually over audio signals. Sound was just for monitoring.

Some ye olde modems had a socket that you plugged your regular handset into: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler

I think one was used in the film War Games, but can't recall clearly.

War Games used a Dataphon s21d, iirc.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akustikkoppler#/media/File:Acu...

I had one for my C-64.

I stand corrected! At least until the latter days of dial-up.

Back in the day, I carried an acoustic coupler with my laptop. Also a patch cable with alligator clips. And tools to disassemble stuff.

That's a distinction without a difference. If another family member picked up the phone while you were dialed up, they certainly heard it.

That's why it was just for monitoring - you could hear, but the communication itself was not done via sound.

I don't feel like your reply really explained the confusion. I'll go ahead and be the dense one haha.

Can you further explain the difference in your example? I assume you mean that the bulk of the dial-up data was sent over non-audible ranges? Ie, we couldn't hear the actual data transfering, but we could hear the monitoring tones?

You're not being dense, not at all. I was in a hurry and not clear enough:

Sound is different of audio signal.

Audio signal is whatever way you arrange to represent signals in the audio range of frequencies and, usually, dynamic rang. Sound is a physical phenomenon caused by variation of pressure on air that we can listen to.

So, the transfer was usually done by audio signals, transmitted electrically via copper wire (and, sometimes, magnetic coupling in some modems). You could, of course, convert these audio signals to sound by picking up the phone (or wiring the modem to the sound card), but this was just for you to listen to. The communication was not depended on sound itself.

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