To celebrate the successful sell-off of its Yellow Pages division this month, AT&T posted this video showcasing the incredible technology that was developed internally at Bell Labs. I am actually quite shocked that computerized graphic design and desktop publishing was so advanced when I was just a baby.
In 1977, Bell Labs built an early touch-screen system to more easily produce advertisements for inclusion in the Yellow Pages. The system was designed to eliminate the need for physical paste-ups, allowing easy creation of graphic advertisements that would go directly from the screen to the Phone Book.
Which makes me wonder, what happened to that innovative spirit? Below is the video:
http://techchannel.att.com/embed/index.cfm?mediaID=11001&w=560&h=315