From: jishnu@nospam.verizon.net   
      
   On 6/24/2014 12:42 PM, Stephen Sprunk wrote:   
   > On 24-Jun-14 10:00, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:   
      
   >> Would you know when this became widely available?  I think some   
   >> people have had it for many years.   
   >   
   > I know I saw them in the early 1990s, but I probably wouldn't have   
   > recognized them any earlier than that--and I wasn't exposed to many   
   > office environments before then anyway.   
   >   
   > But, as a general rule, if it has roughly the same buttons as and looks   
   > like a phone in your house, it's probably an analog PBX phone, whereas   
   > if it has lots of buttons and looks weird, it's probably a digital or   
   > VoIP PBX phone.   
      
   The first digital PBXs from AT&T, with separate signal channel, a   
   precursor to ISDN came out in 1984/85. I worked on one, which was   
   internally known as Gazelle in Bell Labs. It was commercially introduced   
   as System 75, together with its bigger cousin System 85, which   
   internally was known as Antelope. Then they were both branded as the   
   beginnings of the Definity suit of PBX products which eventually   
   included IP switches too.   
      
   The entire division involved migrated to Lucent upon the breakup of AT&T   
   and then to Avaya. I left work on distributed call processing system and   
   moved over to work on microkernel UNIX before Lucent came about, though   
   my vested pension landed up with Lucent.   
      
   Both Gazelle and Antelope used time division multiplexed backplane as   
   the switch fabric. The control software for Gazelle was one of the first   
   to use a real full fledged real-time operating system based on the   
   Communicating Sequential Processes paradigm. The OS was called   
   Oryx-Pecos developed in the Denver Labs (Broomfield). Antelope   
   development was in Denver and Gazelle development was in Holmdel and   
   then Middletown and Lincroft.   
      
   Those were fun days.... The core development of this stuff spanned the   
   period 1980 - 85. Mike Flavin was the boss of Antelope and Alec Feiner   
   was the boss of Gazelle development, both hardware and software.   
      
   /J   
      
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