Hayes Microcomputer Products

Hayes Microcomputer Products was a U.S.-based manufacturer of modems. The company is well known for the Smartmodem, which introduced a control language for operating the functions of the modem via the serial interface to the data terminal equipment, in contrast to manual operation with front-panel switches. This smart modem approach dramatically simplified and automated operation. Today almost all modems use a variant of the Hayes command set.

Hayes was a major brand in the modem market from the introduction of the original 300 bit/s Smartmodem in 1981, and was known for high quality products. They remained a major vendor throughout the 1980s, periodically introducing models with higher throughput. In the early 1990s a number of greatly cost-reduced high-performance modems were released by competitors, notably the SupraFAXModem 14400, which eroded price points in the market. Hayes was never able to respond effectively. The widespread introduction of ADSL and cable modems in the mid-1990s repeatedly drove the company in Chapter 11 protection before being liquidated in 1999.

Dennis C. Hayes left the Georgia Institute of Technology in the mid-1970s to work at an early data communications company, National Data Corp, a company that handled electronic money transfers and credit card authorizations. Hayes' job was to set up modem connections for NDC's customers.

At the time, modems generally came in two versions, one for the end-user that required the user to dial the phone manually and use an acoustic coupler for connection, and another dedicated to answering incoming calls that was intended for use on the minicomputer or mainframe the user was calling into. The connection and disconnection was entirely manual, with the user picking up the phone's handset, dialing manually, and then pressing the handset into the coupler if a carrier frequency was heard. Disconnecting at the end of the session was also manual, with the user lifting the handset out of the coupler and hanging it up on the phone body.

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