Transaction network, telephones, and terminals: The switched network transaction telephone system

In June of 1972, an AT&T/BTL project team was formed to determine the evolving communication needs of the financial and retail industries as they moved to implement electronic funds transfer systems. The Bell System response occurred in three phases. The first phase introduced the Transaction I telephone, 407B data sets, and the Transaction Telephone Test Line Station in order to provide a simple means of evolving from the widespread manual-entry/audio-response systems into automatic-entry/audio-response systems. The second phase expanded our system offering to include Transaction II telephone, 407C data sets, and an upgraded Transaction Telephone Test Line Station. The third phase introduced the Transaction printer, which provided a simple means of generating receipts at the terminal location under control of the data center computer. This paper describes the resulting Switched Network Transaction Telephone System and the individual products of which it is built.