<story><title>Quindar Tones: the beeps heard in recordings of astronauts in space</title><url>https://jalopnik.com/theres-an-actual-name-and-reason-for-those-beeps-you-he-1841024797</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bilekas</author><text>&amp;gt; if NASA wanted to send control signals like transmit on and off, they’d need to run a whole parallel set of wires, which would be expensive. So, they came up with a solution: use the same lines for control signals as well!&lt;p&gt;It really seems that in earlier years, when resources were limited, people really used their ingenuity far better than today.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I have rose tinted glasses, but the level of creativity and cleverness seen in old solutions to problems&amp;#x2F;challenges just blows my mind all the time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bmgxyz</author><text>I agree that it seems like engineers of the past were more clever than us today, but I suspect that we feel that way only because a lot of the garbage systems and code have been lost to time. The good stuff gets immortalized and passed down, while the bad stuff isn&amp;#x27;t, much in the same way that nobody will see my hacky Python scripts in 30 years (with any luck). It&amp;#x27;s a selection bias.&lt;p&gt;See also people who are convinced they were born in the wrong time period. Much more annoying that you or me, I&amp;#x27;d say, but the same principle nonetheless.</text></comment>
<story><title>Quindar Tones: the beeps heard in recordings of astronauts in space</title><url>https://jalopnik.com/theres-an-actual-name-and-reason-for-those-beeps-you-he-1841024797</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bilekas</author><text>&amp;gt; if NASA wanted to send control signals like transmit on and off, they’d need to run a whole parallel set of wires, which would be expensive. So, they came up with a solution: use the same lines for control signals as well!&lt;p&gt;It really seems that in earlier years, when resources were limited, people really used their ingenuity far better than today.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I have rose tinted glasses, but the level of creativity and cleverness seen in old solutions to problems&amp;#x2F;challenges just blows my mind all the time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>Inband vs out-of-band signalling is one of those great debates in telecoms. You can see it in RS232 as well, with &amp;quot;XON&amp;#x2F;XOFF&amp;quot; characters versus &amp;quot;RTS&amp;#x2F;CTS&amp;quot; extra signalling lines.&lt;p&gt;Most internet protocols are &amp;quot;in-band&amp;quot;, but there are two big exceptions in FTP and SIP, which is very much an internet protocol designed by phone people.</text></comment>