0:04

This is antique the

0:06

Atari 8-bit podcast. I'm

0:09

Kay Savitz. It's a

0:11

dangerous game in the

0:13

computer history field to

0:15

call anything the first,

0:17

but by phone is a

0:20

very strong contender to call

0:22

it. But by phone is

0:24

a very strong contender to

0:27

call the first, but by

0:29

phone is a very strong

0:32

contender to call the first.

0:34

Years before Yahoo, before Craigslist,

0:36

Bifone was a text-based dial-up

0:39

service available at 300 and

0:41

1,200 bits per second that

0:43

provided business listings, movie times,

0:46

and personal ads, all for

0:48

free to collars. The service

0:50

was launched in late 1982 and

0:53

was limited to the West Los

0:55

Angeles area. Bifone was the

0:57

brainchild of brothers Bill and

0:59

David Lappin. Here's what the

1:02

August 1984 issue of I trippily

1:04

computer wrote. Buy phones electronic

1:06

yellow pages service for Los

1:08

Angeles is answering over 3,000

1:10

customer requests a day on

1:13

anything from movies to restaurants

1:15

to auto repair and the

1:17

best part, it's all free.

1:19

The philosophy was to provide

1:21

sponsored information paid for by

1:23

the advertiser, not the consumer.

1:25

The computer organizes over 10,000

1:27

listings to respond exactly to the

1:30

caller's request. According to the company,

1:32

the system had to be easy

1:35

for computer novices to operate, yet

1:37

powerful enough to be of value.

1:39

Four proficiency levels are used, each

1:42

introducing additional features. Beginning users

1:44

only see six different categories of

1:46

listings. Restaurants arranged by price or

1:49

nationality, movie schedules, plays. As users

1:51

advance, they see an expanded list

1:53

and are shown how to formulate

1:56

a search. Retrieved listings are arranged

1:58

by their distance from the... user

2:00

with the closest shown first. Expert

2:03

users are able to specify time

2:05

and day when they want to

2:07

buy an item and get information

2:10

only about stores that are open

2:12

then. Bifone is now testing expansion

2:14

to determine how difficult it will

2:17

be to create similar systems in

2:19

other cities. I interviewed Bifone founders

2:21

Bill and David Lappin on March

2:24

14, 2025. A video version of

2:26

this interview is also available on

2:28

YouTube and Internet Archive. Okay, so

2:31

first of all, most importantly, we've

2:33

got Bill and David Lappin. Who's

2:35

the older brother? Bill, I am.

2:38

Bill. Two years, year and a

2:40

half. Okay. All right. Great. So

2:42

I'd like to start before the

2:45

beginning, before you created Byphone. If

2:47

you could kind of give me

2:50

some... prehistory about education, how you

2:52

get into computers, and what kind

2:54

of go from there. Do you

2:57

want to start, Bill, since you're

2:59

older? Sure, okay, all right. So

3:01

I was practicing law before we

3:04

started. I was a lawyer. I

3:06

had gone to law school and

3:08

I had also gotten an NBA.

3:11

And during law school, I got

3:13

computer time. During undergraduate I had

3:15

gotten computer time. This was back

3:18

in the late 70s and you

3:20

had to vie for computer time

3:22

to be able to use the

3:25

computer at the school. It wasn't

3:27

just freely available. So in undergraduate

3:29

I'd gotten computer time and it

3:32

programmed a bunch of things. And

3:34

in law school I was able

3:36

to get it through the NBA

3:39

and I programmed a backgammon. So

3:41

the computer would play against me.

3:43

That was probably my best accomplishment

3:46

in law school. I was always

3:48

a, not always, I was very

3:50

interested in computers. I had very

3:53

little train. I had a couple

3:55

classes. I had one undergraduate class

3:57

and then the professor said come

4:00

into my. graduate level class and

4:02

I was an undergraduate but I

4:04

went to the graduate level class.

4:07

So I think I had an

4:09

affinity to it but not really

4:11

much education in it but had

4:14

a lot of time programming and

4:16

so that's where I was

4:18

before we started the business

4:21

and I was happily practicing

4:23

law but I didn't know

4:25

that it was going to

4:27

be my my career I

4:29

wasn't sure I was fine.

4:32

came out a little differently.

4:34

I went to Stanford and

4:36

started in electrical engineering. So

4:38

my background is more technical.

4:41

I think the first computer

4:43

ever saw was the old

4:45

paper tape teletext terminals and

4:47

then we moved up in

4:50

beginning of college to the

4:52

IBM punch cards and it

4:54

just fascinated me. But there

4:56

wasn't much in the way

4:59

of computer programming being offered

5:01

in the college those days,

5:03

so it was electrical engineering.

5:05

And I ended up going

5:08

to England for a year

5:10

after college on a martial

5:12

scholarship to study the sociological,

5:14

political, and economic effects of

5:17

technology. And then came back

5:19

to the masters at Stanford

5:21

in computer design. and went

5:23

from there. Ended up working

5:26

for a company for a

5:28

short time that may test

5:30

equipment for the back end

5:32

of semiconductor assembly lines. So

5:35

they test the chips as

5:37

they came off the line.

5:39

All right. So what was

5:41

the genesis for the creation

5:44

of Bifon? Well, we... We

5:46

get together on the weekends

5:48

and just sort of brainstorm

5:50

about ideas trying to see

5:53

if there was something we

5:55

could come up with to

5:57

work together on. And the

5:59

big thing at the time

6:02

was yellow pages, a lot

6:04

of money there, a lot

6:06

of business, a lot of

6:08

geographic diversity on it. And

6:11

we decided that computers could

6:13

probably do that better. We

6:15

were looking at the impetus

6:17

for computers going into the

6:20

house, and we thought that

6:22

the bank at home industry

6:24

was going to drive that.

6:26

I had seen modems in

6:29

my Stanford days. There's a

6:31

guy named Red Gillette who

6:33

ran the stockroom where you

6:35

could get parts and he

6:38

gave me as I left

6:40

an old 300-bod modem acoustic

6:42

murmur. You put the, and

6:44

I was fascinated with the

6:47

idea of communications and the

6:49

computers could talk to each

6:51

other and would be able

6:53

to open up this world.

6:56

But remember in 1982 which is

6:59

when we started this people didn't

7:01

have modems in their homes and

7:03

most people didn't have computers in

7:05

their homes. So this was all

7:08

brand new. I think we were

7:10

the first world's first electronic yellow

7:12

pages were the first that we

7:15

knew about about six months or

7:17

a year later the French government

7:19

came up with one I think

7:22

was called mini tell I believe

7:24

that they would put terminals into

7:26

people's homes. and run it. But

7:28

we were there before them and

7:31

we were there way too early

7:33

and that might have been a

7:35

problem, but that's where we were.

7:38

Sure. All right, so you had

7:40

this idea to create an electronic

7:42

yellow pages because you had fiddled

7:45

with a modem that one time.

7:47

Is that basically it? Well,

7:50

the modem was the impetus

7:52

to start thinking about communications

7:54

and the yellow pages was

7:56

a successful business model that

7:59

we thought was. could easily

8:01

be computerized and could add

8:03

a lot of value to.

8:05

So our original system would

8:07

get where the person was

8:10

located and show them places

8:12

that were close to them,

8:14

show them places that were

8:16

open now, and the information

8:18

could change on a daily

8:21

basis so that they could

8:23

have movie schedules, specials, all

8:25

these things couldn't be provided

8:27

by yellow pages. Go

8:30

about creating the thing getting

8:32

the hardware writing the software

8:34

tell me the story Well

8:37

at the time there were

8:39

computers available that we found

8:41

that would dedicate a processor

8:44

with micro processors to each

8:46

incoming Modem and they would

8:48

allow multiple boards to be

8:50

hooked up to a common

8:53

database or controller And we

8:55

liked the style of that

8:57

architecture. And it was amazing

9:00

because in those days, we

9:02

had to buy a hard

9:04

drive. And the thing was

9:07

probably three by two by

9:09

one foot, multiple thousand dollars.

9:11

And it held 10 megabytes.

9:13

And we were blown away

9:16

that that capacity existed. And

9:18

that's how we set up

9:20

the original system with a

9:23

bunch of modems out of

9:25

our parents' house and a

9:27

bunch of phone lines coming

9:30

in because it was well

9:32

before the internet was publicly

9:34

available. And then we started

9:36

writing the software. Wow. So

9:39

this was literally run out

9:41

of your parents' house with

9:43

a bunch of phone lines.

9:46

And I know that's that

9:48

seems pretty. Kind of

9:50

low tech. It was all low

9:52

tech, but well, we were good

9:54

trapping it. Yeah, yeah, neat. How

9:56

many lines did you start with?

9:58

How many did you ultimately have?

10:00

I think we started with probably

10:02

three or four lines and then

10:04

in the LA area went up

10:07

to about 25. And general telephone

10:09

at the time kept wondering what

10:11

we were doing with that many

10:13

phone lines coming into a residence.

10:15

They probably thought we were doing

10:17

illegal betting or something. Hmm. Interesting.

10:19

They said they had never run

10:21

that many phone lines into a

10:23

residence except for in Ronald Reagan's

10:25

house. who was not that far

10:27

from my parents' house, they had

10:29

run that many phone lines in

10:31

because he needed them, but nobody

10:33

else needed that many phone lines.

10:35

What in the world were we

10:37

doing? We showed them and they

10:40

didn't believe it, but you know.

10:42

So I would like to know

10:44

why you were doing this out

10:46

of West LA. It was just

10:48

because you were in there, that's

10:50

where your parents' house was. Is

10:52

that, was it just a matter

10:54

of convenience? That's where you started?

10:56

phone calls were only free for

10:58

about a six or eight mile

11:00

radius from where you were located.

11:02

So it turned out that Westwood

11:04

which is where my parents our

11:06

parents lived was pretty good because

11:08

it was about that far from

11:11

the ocean and then we could

11:13

cover almost into the San Fernando

11:15

Valley not very far in. and

11:17

a little bit south so we

11:19

it was a good location to

11:21

start with because of the the

11:23

fact that people were not willing

11:25

to pay to call a long

11:27

distance number that you know long

11:29

distance within LA was was more

11:31

than six or eight miles those

11:33

calls will all cost money per

11:35

minute and so we didn't think

11:37

that people would do that later

11:39

on we ended up putting an

11:41

office in Hollywood to also serve

11:44

people because again it was still

11:46

even though it was later on

11:48

it was still a charge for

11:50

those calls so we had to

11:52

start moving to other areas too

11:54

but yeah it turned out that

11:56

that's where our parents lived so

11:58

it was was cheap rent, but

12:00

it was also really a good

12:02

location because it just had good

12:04

coverage. So what did your your

12:06

parents think of this all this

12:08

this crazy wires and hardware computers

12:10

you know running out of their

12:12

their basement or wherever it was?

12:14

I wasn't the basement was in

12:17

my bedroom. Okay. They didn't care.

12:19

The wires all came in underground

12:21

and the computer Everything was in

12:23

my bedroom and it was really

12:25

isolated there. We did not take

12:27

over the whole house. Once the

12:29

wires came in from the phone

12:31

company, they were routed one time.

12:33

They did a construction job to

12:35

bring up the cabling into the

12:37

room and after that it was

12:39

a simple connection. And we really

12:41

didn't disturb them much. We were

12:43

over there a lot and we

12:45

ate. a lot, but we didn't

12:47

disturb them much. We were, it

12:50

was all contained. And we got

12:52

Westwood, which was important to us

12:54

because we were pretty heavy into

12:56

the movies. Of all of our

12:58

things in the electronic yellow pages,

13:00

the movies changed the most. Every

13:02

week, there would be a change

13:04

in all of the movies, or

13:06

almost all of them. And the

13:08

movie times would change during the

13:10

week, and we could keep that

13:12

stuff updated, but... Westwood was an

13:14

important area for movies. I think

13:16

at the time there were probably

13:18

more than 10 movie theaters in

13:21

Westwood. Probably 15. Dave, do you

13:23

know how many theaters there were?

13:25

There were a lot. I don't

13:27

remember. There were a lot of

13:29

theaters in Westwood and surrounding areas.

13:31

Yeah. So when the movie listings

13:33

changed, were you just keying them

13:35

in by hand? Yes. Yes. So

13:37

you look at the newspaper or

13:39

call the paper? Yes, we did

13:41

both newspaper and called the theater.

13:43

And we did that every Friday

13:45

morning. I think it was Friday.

13:47

The movies changed on Friday. It

13:49

might have been Thursday, but I

13:51

think it was Friday. And we

13:54

would get in early and call

13:56

and be sure that we had

13:58

the right schedule for the weekend.

14:00

coming up. We tried working with a

14:02

couple of the movie theaters and

14:04

we were sort of into one

14:06

of them and they basically looked

14:08

at our system and they said

14:11

we're not going to pay you

14:13

anything because you need us because we

14:15

are giving you the value that

14:17

you have. And they were right. We

14:20

still wanted money but you know they

14:22

were right that they were really

14:24

providing a lot of value for

14:26

our service. Were people

14:28

calling in for the movie listings?

14:31

Was that more convenient for folks

14:33

than? I think there were, I think, you

14:35

know, we didn't run studies. My guess

14:37

is more than a third, probably

14:39

close to a half of the

14:41

people using our system were accessing

14:43

the movies. Just because that's the

14:45

stuff that changes constantly. And with

14:48

the communications that they had, that's

14:50

what they were interested in.

14:52

They know where the restaurants are that

14:54

they like. They're interested in a new

14:57

restaurant occasionally, but the movies is every

14:59

weekend something has changed and so the

15:01

information was constantly new. So that I

15:03

think is probably what drove a lot

15:06

of it. We would occasionally snoop on

15:08

sessions where we would see what people

15:10

were asking and what their responses were

15:13

to see how the system was

15:15

performing and stuff and there were

15:17

a lot of movie requests. So I

15:19

saw I read a bunch of

15:21

articles. contemporary articles about by phone

15:24

and many of them said there

15:26

were 10,000 listings in the database

15:28

for businesses. How did those get

15:30

entered? Were those also hand keyed?

15:33

Because that's terrible. Yes, we hired

15:35

people to go through the white

15:37

pages, not the yellow pages, the

15:39

white pages, and enter any business

15:41

that they understood what it was.

15:43

If you could read the name

15:45

of it and know what it is, enter

15:47

it. So if it's John's car repair. That's

15:50

fair. If it's John's, you can't enter that.

15:52

We don't know what to do with that.

15:54

But if we knew what to do with

15:56

it from the name, then go ahead and enter

15:58

it. And so we gave him one. pages

16:00

from the various areas that we

16:02

covered with our free calling and

16:04

said enter and we paid them

16:06

for entry. And then once they

16:09

came in then we started categorizing

16:11

them and working them so they

16:13

could be retrieved. I see. And

16:15

then businesses could also choose to

16:17

pay for a premium listing or

16:19

something like that as I recall,

16:21

right? Yes, yes, if a business

16:23

wanted more information than just their

16:26

their address and their phone number,

16:28

if they wanted to have hours,

16:30

if they wanted to have specials,

16:32

if they wanted to say something

16:34

about why they're doing what they're

16:36

doing or whatever, then they could

16:38

pay for that and we'd get

16:40

them more space. Now, as David

16:42

said, we didn't have a lot

16:45

of space in 10 megabytes. There

16:47

were no graphics because back then

16:49

the modems were slow enough that

16:51

graphics were too slow. So it

16:53

was all text based. And so

16:55

the specials and whatever would just

16:57

be descriptions of, we couldn't do

16:59

pictures. Sure. I convinced my dad

17:02

who ran a travel agency to

17:04

buy an ad, it was like

17:06

$100 a year, $1.50 or something

17:08

like that. And so I don't,

17:10

did you get any other, any

17:12

other sales other than my dad?

17:14

Yeah. We did. I don't think

17:16

we had a hundred. at any

17:18

one time, but we did have

17:21

some. But I don't think it

17:23

ever got to 100. But there

17:25

were a few sales. You know,

17:27

of the 10,000, 100 is not

17:29

a big number. No. And we

17:31

didn't get there. Now, it was

17:33

just too early. The biggest problem,

17:35

that's right. We were too early.

17:38

The biggest problem is we would

17:40

go in and talk to the

17:42

owners of the businesses and tell

17:44

them all about their business could

17:46

be found on a computer and

17:48

they didn't know what a computer

17:50

was. And then if we got

17:52

some who understood what a computer

17:55

was, they didn't know what a

17:57

modem was. So how could somebody

17:59

get this information from their home?

18:01

So we were too early. They

18:03

just didn't understand the concept. you

18:05

know, we try. Right. Yeah, direct

18:07

sales for something that people just

18:09

didn't understand must have been very

18:11

difficult. I found a quote from

18:14

you from from one of you

18:16

at the time saying the company

18:18

says selling computer-based advertising to retailers

18:20

who may not know much about

18:22

computers is difficult. Yeah. Well, you

18:24

know, they're always worried about fraud

18:26

and, you know, they don't understand

18:28

what a computer is. So why

18:31

is this real? What is the

18:33

value here? I don't have a

18:35

computer. I don't think any of

18:37

my customers do. You know, and,

18:39

you know, that that could be

18:41

true, but we're bringing new customers

18:43

who you don't have. So that

18:45

was that was one option that

18:47

we had. Yeah. One attempt to

18:50

address this was we created a

18:52

Basically a plastic card like a

18:54

credit card that would identify them

18:56

so they could then Users could

18:58

take that in show it get

19:00

a discount and then show the

19:02

proprietor that they were actually using

19:04

the system to get the information

19:07

Interesting and another thing we did

19:09

was we went to a few

19:11

hotels and put public terminals in

19:13

the lobby of the hotels So

19:15

the people who didn't have computers

19:17

who were at a hotel visiting

19:19

from out of town would have

19:21

access to the system. And I

19:23

think David, I think that the

19:26

computer that we placed dialed right

19:28

into our system, I don't think

19:30

it was, it went anywhere else.

19:32

Yeah, it was just, it was

19:34

dialed right to us because there

19:36

was no internet. So they just,

19:38

they pushed a button and it

19:40

connected to us. Yeah. Interesting, how

19:43

many of those public public public

19:45

terminals would you guess that you

19:47

did? Yeah, we had to build

19:49

up the cabinetry for it and

19:51

mount the computer inside and the

19:53

monitor inside, the modem inside. They

19:55

were hand-built prototypes. Yeah. Wow. So

19:57

I keep seeing the numbers that

19:59

you had 3,000 calls a day,

20:02

or maybe it was 3,000 searches

20:04

a day. It was a little

20:06

nebulous in what I was reading.

20:08

What do you think? How many

20:10

calls a day were people did

20:12

you get? I would guess those

20:14

calls. I don't think we ever

20:16

measured searches, did we, David? Yeah,

20:19

we kept track of that we

20:21

had metrics going of numbers. But

20:23

I don't. Yeah, and I don't

20:25

remember what that was. And it

20:27

depends on the time too, because

20:29

as Bill said, these were sort

20:31

of hyper local based on the

20:33

phone free phone calling areas. And

20:35

eventually we ended up opening a

20:38

lot of satellite locations in Vancouver

20:40

around the United States and Toronto

20:42

and then eventually in Hong Kong

20:44

and Singapore that provided that but

20:46

also moved into a different business

20:48

that was when we saw how

20:50

people were using the system we

20:52

moved into that. That's probably moving

20:55

a little too far ahead. So

20:57

it was launched in, iPhone

20:59

launched in 1983, I believe.

21:01

Does that sound about right?

21:03

Late 82, early 83. Okay.

21:05

Did it, did it make

21:08

any money? We made some

21:10

money, but we didn't make

21:12

a profit. Okay. All right.

21:14

We didn't cover our costs.

21:16

We had some income, but

21:18

we didn't cover the costs.

21:20

And the income was from

21:22

businesses advertising? Yeah. I don't

21:24

think we had any other

21:26

income. We didn't have any

21:28

income from the terminals we

21:30

placed. We did that for

21:32

free. So I think it

21:34

was just the advertising. But

21:36

eventually we did find a

21:38

way to make some money.

21:40

One day we were contacted

21:42

by some entrepreneurs out of

21:44

Vancouver who wanted to try

21:46

and make the system work

21:48

and franchise effectively one of

21:50

these systems. And we worked

21:53

with them. They put it

21:55

in, we cloned the system

21:57

with a computer located in

21:59

Vancouver and They were having

22:01

trouble with selling the ads.

22:03

They actually created what they

22:05

called Egbert, which was a

22:07

terminal they could sell because

22:09

people didn't have computers. It

22:11

was a little portable CRT

22:13

keyboard. They mounted a modem

22:15

on top of it and

22:17

sold that as a way

22:19

people could get into the

22:21

system. And at some point

22:23

they came to us and

22:25

said, we're not getting enough

22:27

use. We should, we want

22:29

to provide. the Vancouver Stock

22:31

Exchange on there because it's

22:33

sort of a wild stock

22:35

exchange. People want to keep

22:38

track of it and that'll

22:40

be this free service that

22:42

will really introduce this and

22:44

give us another reason to

22:46

sell these terminals and to

22:48

sell your and to sell

22:50

the service. And shortly after

22:52

doing that and setting up

22:54

the feed for the Vancouver

22:56

Stock Exchange, they came back

22:58

to us and said, you

23:00

know, 80% of our traffic

23:02

is for the stock exchange.

23:04

And maybe we need to

23:06

be charging for that and

23:08

making that a business. So

23:10

we started implementing that in

23:12

Vancouver, and then that became

23:14

a business that we could

23:16

actually charge for real-time stock

23:18

quotes. Interesting. Without the usual

23:20

15-minute delay, that was all

23:22

often, I don't know if

23:25

that was the rule in

23:27

Canada, actually, but... It was,

23:29

and if you, if you

23:31

could have real-time stock quotes,

23:33

yes. Neat. Before we get

23:35

too far into that, I'd

23:37

like to know more about

23:39

the, the, the hardware of

23:41

the original by phone, was

23:43

this a, a, a CPM

23:45

machine, was this, like an

23:47

IBM PC, or was some

23:49

sort of mini-computer? It was

23:51

actually before the PCs were

23:53

ubiquitous, and it was based

23:55

on CPM. and it had

23:57

individual boards with Z80s on

23:59

them that were dedicated to

24:01

each user, and then a

24:03

controller board that interfaced with

24:05

the hard drive and then

24:07

handed the data. over to

24:10

the individual boards as they

24:12

needed it. So it was

24:14

a networked system. So a

24:16

user would call in and

24:18

they would have a dedicated

24:20

computer to them. They would

24:22

share memory to get to

24:24

the information. But each call

24:26

had its own computer. We

24:29

both did. Yep, we wrote the

24:32

software as we were. Sorry, it

24:34

was written in the language of

24:36

Basic. Okay. All right. Well, yes,

24:38

but there was also a lot

24:41

of assembly stuff, David. Remember. Yes,

24:43

yes. Especially as we got more

24:45

and more users we needed to

24:48

be more efficient. So a lot

24:50

of it was done in assembly.

24:52

Yeah. With calls from basic. Is

24:58

there any chance you still have

25:00

any of the code? You know,

25:02

it's one of those things. I

25:04

think we have the code and

25:07

they're probably on tapes that can't

25:09

be read anymore. If you can

25:11

find the tapes, I can get

25:13

them read. Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah,

25:16

I've, yeah, I, I just, I've

25:18

just read an eight-age disk yesterday

25:20

and that's easy. For tapes, I'll,

25:22

I'll need to hunt around, but

25:25

we can, we can get it

25:27

done. That'd be fun to, to,

25:29

to see the, to see the,

25:32

see that if you, if you're,

25:34

if you're willing to, if you're

25:36

willing to share that if you're

25:38

willing to share. Sure. Okay, so

25:41

by phone's humming along, then you

25:43

start doing the Vancouver Stock Exchange.

25:45

And that sounds like that was

25:47

a little more successful because you

25:50

can sell access to that data.

25:52

Yes. Yes. Okay. And then that

25:54

grew to include the Toronto Stock

25:56

Exchange and we opened up an

25:59

office in Toronto. And then while

26:01

we were there, we brought in

26:03

all the US exchanges. And then

26:05

we came into New York with

26:08

an office and set up a

26:10

few more offices around. So we

26:12

now had the US and the

26:14

Canadian exchanges. Wow. So I'm guessing

26:17

by now it's not running on

26:19

CPM machines, running basic software. Well,

26:21

it's interesting. We were originally cloning

26:24

these systems in each location. It

26:26

seemed like every time we called

26:28

in to get another computer, they

26:30

had changed the model. So the

26:33

hardware was slightly different. We had

26:35

to program it slightly differently, especially

26:37

with the assembly code. And we

26:39

called in, I think, for the

26:42

Toronto system on a Friday to

26:44

this company we were using for

26:46

the computers and said, we want

26:48

to order another one. And they

26:51

said, well, we've discontinued that one.

26:53

We've got a new one coming

26:55

up. And so over the weekend,

26:57

we sat down and said, OK,

27:00

if we were to build a

27:02

computer ourselves, what would we want

27:04

to build? And so we worked

27:06

over the weekend and came up

27:09

with an architecture that could handle

27:11

many orders of magnitude more users

27:13

at a lower price. And on

27:15

Monday when they called and said,

27:18

well, we can find one of

27:20

those old computers. We said, well,

27:22

I think we're going to build

27:25

one ourselves. So for the next

27:27

year, we designed the boards and

27:29

the operating system and built this

27:31

machine that could handle like 20,000

27:34

users rather than 30. And multiple

27:36

stock feeds coming in from around

27:38

the world. And it was, that

27:40

was quite a bit of fun.

27:43

Nice. Is this what you called

27:45

the Fast Tech's computer? Yes. Yes.

27:47

All right. Me. And then went

27:49

into New York, the main computer.

27:52

We stripped it down and used

27:54

it down and used parts of

27:56

it. the same basic architecture at

27:58

remote sites. was still the same.

28:01

Every caller had their own computer

28:03

and each of those computers would go

28:05

to shared memory. So that architecture

28:07

stayed the same. We just had

28:09

no hard drive in it instead of

28:11

a hard drive where we're using RAM.

28:14

And that gave us a lot of speed

28:16

and that gave us the ability to

28:18

process a lot of stock trades very

28:20

quickly. There was one day. during the Reagan

28:22

administration of Black Friday where somebody from Charles

28:25

Schwab called our office in New York and

28:27

said, I don't get it. You guys are

28:29

two and a half hours ahead of Quotron.

28:32

It was a huge volume trading that day.

28:34

And they said, what are you doing? And

28:36

we said, well, we don't, we don't have

28:38

a hard drive. We go right to the

28:41

memory and it's much, much faster. And it's

28:43

much, much faster. And so I guess, I

28:45

don't know if it was two and a

28:47

two and a half hours. That's what they said,

28:49

that's what they said. problem with it

28:52

is if we lost power for more

28:54

than half a second or whatever we

28:56

wiped the whole thing out. We had

28:58

to get a UPS in there to

29:00

keep the thing running. But it

29:02

was really fast and so we

29:04

can handle the stock feeds. When

29:06

you said you can handle 20,000

29:08

users you don't mean like you

29:10

didn't have 20,000 phone lines right?

29:13

We didn't but we could have

29:15

scaled it to that. Okay. I

29:17

think in the New York office,

29:19

we had a couple hundred lines.

29:21

Yes. And then the remote

29:24

offices would have 20 to

29:26

50 or whatever they were. I

29:28

think in China, in Hong Kong,

29:30

we probably had 50. I

29:33

don't know. I don't remember.

29:35

But yeah. So by phone seems

29:37

to have, starts disappearing from the

29:39

BBS listings around 1987. Does

29:41

that sound about right when

29:43

to tell me about when?

29:45

I know you moved on

29:47

to stock exchanges and thing,

29:49

but with the original buy phone

29:52

thing, how long did that last when

29:54

and how did I show you seven? Yeah,

29:56

I would say it was more than

29:58

10 years, wouldn't you David? Well,

30:01

you know, we did move

30:03

on to the stock quotes, and

30:05

I don't know at what

30:07

point we really de -emphasize the

30:09

yellow pages itself. we kept it

30:11

running. We did keep it

30:14

running in West LA, probably the

30:16

whole time, up until about

30:18

94. than 10 years, yeah. Yeah.

30:20

Nice. Okay. I'm just going

30:22

off old listings of bullion board

30:24

systems, so, you know, there's

30:26

nothing less reliable than that information.

30:28

Well, we were not promoting

30:31

it, certainly, because we were busy

30:33

with the stock quote services. So

30:40

it sounds like as

30:42

a business, you found success

30:44

with the stock quote

30:46

thing, expanding in multiple cities.

30:49

You had subscribers paying for

30:51

the information, and lots

30:53

of users. Yes. All right.

30:55

Yes. We were told

30:57

at one point that we

30:59

were the largest provider

31:01

of real -time stock information

31:04

to private users in the

31:06

U .S. And

31:09

were your users like what we would

31:11

call today day traders? Maybe it was

31:13

called that. Yes. Yeah, they were. Basically,

31:15

they would be at home, and they

31:17

would just dial in, and they would

31:19

stay on all day. So we had

31:21

a computer dedicated to them, and all

31:23

day long they would be on the

31:25

phone. So, that was an issue with

31:27

the cost point of view, because we

31:29

were expecting multiple people on the computer,

31:31

and they would just take it for

31:34

the whole day, because as you say,

31:36

they were day traders. Were they paying

31:38

per month? Per month. Yeah. Not per

31:40

minute or something. Per month. Yeah. Interesting.

31:46

All right, so what

31:48

happened next? I

31:54

mean, that, as

31:56

we said, we

31:58

expanded into the

32:00

the other locations. And the way we

32:02

did this was working

32:05

with companies that wanted

32:07

to go public and

32:09

use our technology. We

32:11

provided the technology and

32:13

servicing for them and

32:15

they did all the

32:17

marketing and customer service

32:19

and billing. And so we had

32:21

a publicly traded company

32:23

in Canada, one in the

32:26

US. And Hong Kong and Singapore were,

32:28

I don't Well, who were they owned

32:30

by? Were they? You know, the guy they

32:32

brought in, I don't think was an owner,

32:34

Hong or whatever his name was, I

32:36

don't think he was an owner. I

32:38

don't know, but I don't know if

32:40

it was owned by the Vancouver company

32:43

or the US company, whether they had

32:45

their own companies. Anyway, there was a

32:47

company, but I don't know who

32:49

owned that company. I don't remember.

32:51

Okay, probably was Vancouver, but now,

32:54

you know, it's probably US, because

32:56

US was probably was Vancouver. Remember

32:59

the US had gone public

33:01

too? Yeah. Yeah. Vancouver company

33:03

never went public, I don't

33:05

think. Yeah. Yeah. And then

33:07

Toronto might have been a

33:09

different company. I don't know.

33:11

I think they went public in

33:13

Toronto. I think they went

33:15

public. They did. Okay. That was

33:18

the first one. Yeah. And how long

33:20

did those stock trading service

33:22

last or stock information

33:24

service last? It lasted

33:26

to about 1994. Good long,

33:28

right? Yes, and it was

33:30

interesting because right about then,

33:32

we were starting to

33:34

hear about this thing called

33:37

the internet and a company

33:39

wanted to buy out the stock

33:41

quote service from the publicly

33:43

traded companies and ended

33:45

up buying it out.

33:47

Probably we figure about

33:49

six months before all

33:51

this information became free

33:53

on the internet. So at the

33:55

timing was very good. Nice.

34:01

Well on by phone you had

34:03

free personal ads and I I'm

34:05

Some kid who was about my

34:08

age in that in the LA

34:10

area posted an ad you know

34:12

I don't remember exactly what he

34:15

said but was just like you

34:17

know I like Atari computers and

34:20

looking for people to you know

34:22

hang out and trade games with

34:24

and I met this guy Tim

34:27

and Tim and I are still

34:29

buddies. We hung out just like

34:31

all the time. Yeah, that's great.

34:34

When we were kids. And we

34:36

met on by phone. We hung

34:38

out all the time. We traded

34:41

games. We played mule. We, you

34:43

know, we went to birthday parties

34:46

together and whatever. And we're still

34:48

Facebook friends. So a successful by

34:50

phone friendship. Yeah. I found another

34:53

something out. What was it in?

34:55

Color computer magazine April 1984 David

34:57

Lappin David you wrote I Recently

35:00

saw the following ad on Los

35:02

Angeles dial-up computerized yellow pages by

35:04

phone roommate wanted I am looking

35:07

for a roommate to share a

35:09

two-bedroom apartment. You may also have

35:11

partial use of my IBM PC

35:14

computer Maybe it should be recast

35:16

lonely computer six playmate also included

35:19

partial use of apartment Now, what

35:21

year was that? 84. See, computers

35:23

were still very rare. So it

35:26

was a big deal to have

35:28

a computer. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

35:30

Yeah, I dialed in with my

35:33

300 bod modem that plugged into

35:35

the joystick port of my computer,

35:37

you know, so. Which is why

35:40

we couldn't have one of the

35:42

reasons we couldn't have any kind

35:44

of graphics because you can't do

35:47

much with 300. Yeah. Exactly. Anyway,

35:49

I think felt the whole just

35:52

that some of the things that

35:54

you that you too created were

35:56

so prescient and so, you know,

35:59

computerized yellow pages, online personal ads

36:01

and movie listings. I mean, you

36:03

were too early, certainly. We were

36:06

too early. But 20 years. But

36:08

you did Craig's list 30 years

36:10

before Craig's list, you know. And

36:13

it was. just an amazingly forward

36:15

thinking idea. We had another thing

36:17

that we started with, it was

36:20

interesting, very early when we put

36:22

the system out, we realized that

36:25

people were confused by it because

36:27

it was a lot to take

36:29

in at once if you didn't

36:32

know computers. And so we created

36:34

a system where when you came

36:36

in, you said how experienced you

36:39

were. in using the system and

36:41

based on that answer, it would

36:43

give you other features or more

36:46

information, more instructions, certain, as certain

36:48

features weren't available until you got

36:50

to a second or third level.

36:53

And I, that was the first

36:55

time I had ever heard of

36:58

that kind of system that, you

37:00

know, adjusted to how you, your

37:02

understanding of where you were and

37:05

what you could deal with. That's

37:07

a fun idea. I'm sure, yes,

37:09

I'm sure you got people in

37:12

there who were computer experts and

37:14

you probably got people who were

37:16

barely knew what a modem was.

37:19

And the more they used it,

37:21

they could then jump up to

37:23

other levels and get more features

37:26

and more and streamline the searches

37:28

with less information. So how, how.

37:31

I know you said you sometimes

37:33

watched calls and you could look

37:35

at analytics and that sort of

37:38

thing. How did you have any

37:40

problems with? I liked to call

37:42

into the iPhone because it was

37:45

a free BBS and the line

37:47

was never busy and I could

37:49

just screw around with someone else's

37:52

computer at no cost. Thank you

37:54

for that. Did you have any

37:56

problems with abuse, with freakers, with

37:59

people trying to crash a system

38:01

or anything like that? We never

38:04

did. No. People were very positive

38:06

about the system and very enthusiastic

38:08

and... and would be more interested

38:11

in helping us than in any

38:13

way damaging or, I don't even

38:15

think we got, I don't remember

38:18

ads that were abusive or, you

38:20

know, needed censoring even. Wow. No,

38:22

we've a different time. People can

38:25

put on personal ads and we

38:27

never had problems with those. Yeah.

38:30

That's impressive. I guess it was

38:32

a different time. This was early

38:34

times. Yeah. Wow. Holy cow. All

38:37

right. So, yeah, I wouldn't, I

38:39

mean, sorry, you'd be, if today,

38:41

it wouldn't last five minutes, you

38:44

know. We'd have to hire full-time

38:46

people just to look at new

38:48

ads and make sure they didn't

38:51

need to be censored. Yeah. Yeah.

38:53

Huh. So, as a company, Bifone

38:55

still exists today, it seems like.

38:58

Of course, you're not doing. the

39:00

same thing, but you show up

39:03

the website. I would like to

39:05

know what y'all are doing today

39:07

and how the name has lasted

39:10

so long. Well, we kept the

39:12

name around. It was a company

39:14

that was owned by the two

39:17

of us. And so we just

39:19

kept it as we would do

39:21

other businesses. We would just throw

39:24

them into there as a method

39:26

of sharing the business. We're completely

39:28

out of computers now. We did

39:31

a stint with medical imaging. where

39:33

we would take x-rays and other

39:36

images and move them around a

39:38

hospital or within a doctor's office

39:40

for display purposes for storage purposes.

39:43

And we did that for, would

39:45

you say, more than almost 10

39:47

years, Dave, would you think with

39:50

the x-ray? I think there's more

39:52

than 10 years, yeah. Okay. And

39:54

we still have some clients who

39:57

are doing that and we do

39:59

support them. They bought the software

40:01

six, seven years ago, whatever it

40:04

is. And we don't charge them

40:06

anything. We still support them if

40:09

they have questions and problems. We

40:11

don't have a lot of those

40:13

still left because most of them

40:16

have already moved on to something

40:18

else. But we do have some.

40:20

And right now we're using by

40:23

phone really for real estate investing.

40:25

So it has nothing to do

40:27

with computers particularly except for the

40:30

fact that the bills that we

40:32

do are all generated automatically by

40:34

the computer. But other than that,

40:37

it really isn't a computer system

40:39

anymore. So what haven't I asked

40:42

you about the by phone days

40:44

that I should have? Well, one

40:46

thing that was really interesting is

40:49

that because the business was basically

40:51

the two of us, we were

40:53

responsible for all of the technical

40:56

for at some time, basically four

40:58

companies and our own. And this

41:00

was custom build and custom software

41:03

machines. So if there was a

41:05

problem, we had to jump to

41:07

Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, wherever.

41:10

And one time I arrived in

41:12

New York to be met at

41:15

the airport and told. The problem

41:17

in New York isn't serious. We

41:19

have a problem in Hong Kong,

41:22

get on the plane immediately and

41:24

go to Hong Kong. So I

41:26

flew into New York, flew over

41:29

to Hong Kong and then was

41:31

up for like 36 hours fixing

41:33

the problem on off hours because

41:36

he didn't want to mess with

41:38

the computer during the time the

41:41

markets were. So it was really

41:43

a lot of fun and it

41:45

was really sort of cowboy days

41:48

in a way. And it just

41:50

created a real great atmosphere of

41:52

working. And you got to work

41:55

with your brother, which sounds like

41:57

you guys had a good working

41:59

relationship. We had an excellent working

42:02

relationship. Bill's really in a lot

42:04

of ways the creative mind in

42:06

terms of figuring out what What

42:09

the user wanted and where we

42:11

could go with things and what

42:14

we could add and gave all

42:16

the business background that I couldn't.

42:18

And I did a lot of

42:21

the computer design work and a

42:23

lower level computer programming. Bill, you

42:25

looked like you had a answer

42:28

to my question about what I

42:30

should have asked you. Well, the

42:32

name by phone was originally with

42:35

the idea of wouldn't you rather

42:37

shop by phone. So it was

42:39

a method of using a phone

42:42

over, you know, to a computer,

42:44

because you would dial up. And

42:47

then the phone would take you

42:49

to a computer that would let

42:51

you shop. So that's where the

42:54

name came from. Right. And it

42:56

was B.U.Y. dash phone. Yeah. Although

42:58

a couple of the articles I

43:01

read, they got it wrong. They

43:03

did it B.Y. dash. Yeah. Well,

43:05

it was because we were thinking

43:08

it wouldn't you rather shop by

43:10

phone. And then we changed it

43:12

to by being a buy being

43:15

a purchase. because we thought that

43:17

we could do sales over the

43:20

phone, but that that never, I

43:22

don't think we ever did that.

43:24

We never went to the idea

43:27

that somebody could actually order something

43:29

over the phone. We didn't take

43:31

credit cards. We never went to

43:34

that level. What are we looking

43:36

at David? You're showing me let

43:38

your fingers do the walking sort

43:41

of. Exactly. Okay, we've got a,

43:43

it was our original logo. Huh,

43:45

all right, so we've got the

43:48

let your fingers do your walking

43:50

fingers, but instead of a phone,

43:53

it's over a computer terminal. Do

43:55

you have any other stuff? Any

43:57

other, I don't know, printouts? We

44:00

do. We have. The original

44:02

mailing that was done to

44:04

people to get them to sign

44:06

up. It was a fold and

44:08

on the inside information

44:10

they could actually fill out their

44:13

own ad and send it back

44:15

to us. And those were free

44:17

ads. Some of those were free.

44:19

And then if they put

44:21

in more information, it got

44:23

charged. But we were asking for

44:26

free information first. Yeah. What

44:28

else you got? We sent

44:30

out some early mailers and

44:32

and one of the original

44:34

buy phone credit card. Nice.

44:36

The buy phone business card. Yeah,

44:38

it wasn't a credit card,

44:40

definitely. Bonus card. Neat.

44:43

This whole thing just makes

44:45

me happy that the fact that

44:47

you guys two brothers created

44:49

this thing and maybe buy phone

44:51

wasn't a success by itself,

44:53

but it led you to to other

44:56

ventures that that That's a fair

44:58

statement. It wasn't really a success

45:00

by itself. It was a labor

45:02

of love. We enjoyed it. We had

45:04

a good time doing it. It

45:06

wasn't financially profitable, but it

45:09

did lead us to other things. And

45:11

I do remember another quick story, which

45:13

was we got a call one day

45:15

from a guy who was a computer

45:17

science student at UCLA. And he said,

45:20

by the way, do you know the

45:22

four of my five classes demonstrated your

45:24

system in the class? That

45:28

was impressive. Huh, nice. So people

45:30

knew about it. They were wanting to show

45:32

it off. Academics? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And

45:34

in fact, that's how the Canadians got

45:36

to us too, because they went over to

45:39

UCLA and talked to some professor. We don't

45:41

know. That's true. Who told them to go

45:43

talk to us, because they wanted to set

45:45

up some sort of a business with like

45:48

yellow pages. And so they were given our

45:50

information. They contacted us from UCLIA. They're using

45:52

a lay must have liked us a lot,

45:54

but they were very close. I mean, they

45:57

were within the zone, they could get on

45:59

for free. Right. Did

46:01

you get feedback from users other

46:03

than like the UCLA people? No,

46:05

I don't think we met anybody

46:08

who, you know, we heard about

46:10

this professor who referred the Canadians

46:12

to us. Other than that, David,

46:14

I don't think we ever knew

46:16

anybody, you know, there were, there

46:18

were some businesses that advertised, we

46:21

knew them. Yeah. I don't know

46:23

if they used it though. There

46:26

were people who were telling us that

46:28

they used it and really liked it,

46:30

but I'm not sure how they got

46:32

to us. And we also did get

46:35

some people to help us with it

46:37

to sort of be a focus group

46:39

for us. So we would talk to

46:41

them as users. But I don't know.

46:44

I don't know. Yeah. The other thing

46:46

we had that I completely forgot about

46:48

is we allowed people to rate things

46:50

like movies. very early so that we

46:53

could recommend movies based on user ratings.

46:55

You don't think that had been done

46:57

before. You guys probably did the, you

46:59

should have patented all these ideas because

47:02

there's a lot of things that probably

47:04

hadn't been done before on computers. Well,

47:06

the movie rating was good. It was

47:08

on a scale of one to ten.

47:10

You would rate the movies and my

47:13

wife would do it because she saw

47:15

a lot of movies. and her lowest

47:17

rating was an eight. Partly because she

47:19

loved movies, but also I think she

47:22

said that she read about a movie

47:24

before she would go see it. So

47:26

she knew that she only wanted to

47:28

see good movies. I don't know. But

47:31

you could get on there and if

47:33

you've seen a movie, you could get

47:35

a movie and then it gets added

47:37

in with the others. And so we

47:40

had average ratings for the brightest movies.

47:42

I guess that's an early rotten tomatoes.

47:44

I think I had what I need.

47:46

Thank you both. If

47:53

you enjoy these interviews and would like to contribute something,

47:55

please consider supporting my patron at patreon.com/seven. I've been

47:57

been publishing interviews like these

47:59

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48:04

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support will help. Thanks.

48:08

Thanks.