Atari VIDCOM I's and VIDCOM II Group Photo...

[Curt Vendel]

Talk about a very rare photo opportunity... Thanks to Dan Kutsenda who was part of the Atari Professional Products Group and worked on the Vidcom product line, this photo was made possible. One "Vidcom I" belongs to the Atari Museum, which is now joined by the "Vidcom II" modem and the paperwork, the other 2 Vidcom I's are headed out to a museum on the West Coast...

 

 

Edited June 22, 2010 by Curt Vendel

[Cebus Capucinis]

Interesting that there was an acoustic coupler! Basically that added telephone functionality for the speech impaired, I presume. Does the coupler go out to a speaker jack or headphones or something so the person can listen? I'd think with the full phone hooked up to the coupler a person would be able to 'speak' through the Vidcom I but not hear.

 

I'm surprised Atari didn't go further into this market, I bet there was a lot of opportunity for innovation at that time period and I doubt anyone was really doing anything like text-to-speech or the like for medical purposes. I guess they would have overextended themselves in an already drawn-too-thin Warner era.

 

Very cool to see all of it though!

[BDW]

That looks really cool...

[Curt Vendel]

I stumbled across one of the Vidcom I's about 8 years ago, I honestly didn't believe it was really an Atari product, but amazingly it is and this was done in 1978, very impressive effort, it also has flex circuits inside (think chips attached to a thick sheet of plastic that bends and folds to fit into an odd shaped interior cavity of a product. There was a lot of very innovative designs put into this product.

 

 

 

Interesting that there was an acoustic coupler! Basically that added telephone functionality for the speech impaired, I presume. Does the coupler go out to a speaker jack or headphones or something so the person can listen? I'd think with the full phone hooked up to the coupler a person would be able to 'speak' through the Vidcom I but not hear.

 

I'm surprised Atari didn't go further into this market, I bet there was a lot of opportunity for innovation at that time period and I doubt anyone was really doing anything like text-to-speech or the like for medical purposes. I guess they would have overextended themselves in an already drawn-too-thin Warner era.

 

Very cool to see all of it though!

[Big_Mo]

I stumbled across one of the Vidcom I's about 8 years ago, I honestly didn't believe it was really an Atari product, but amazingly it is and this was done in 1978, very impressive effort, it also has flex circuits inside (think chips attached to a thick sheet of plastic that bends and folds to fit into an odd shaped interior cavity of a product. There was a lot of very innovative designs put into this product.

 

 

 

Interesting that there was an acoustic coupler! Basically that added telephone functionality for the speech impaired, I presume. Does the coupler go out to a speaker jack or headphones or something so the person can listen? I'd think with the full phone hooked up to the coupler a person would be able to 'speak' through the Vidcom I but not hear.

 

I'm surprised Atari didn't go further into this market, I bet there was a lot of opportunity for innovation at that time period and I doubt anyone was really doing anything like text-to-speech or the like for medical purposes. I guess they would have overextended themselves in an already drawn-too-thin Warner era.

 

Very cool to see all of it though!

Hey Curt:

 

Sorry to ressurect this thread, but I was curious if you could illuminate what the markings are on the lowest row of three orange buttons. The black text says "who" "how" and "help", but I can only make out yellow text above how (CE?). Are there are other yellow or white symbols on those keys? And are the bottom two buttons "word shift" and "letter shift"?