“I am pleased to find ourselves reaching this milestone,” stated Alan Hartmann, Vice President of Professional Teledata. “It doesn’t seem like that long ago when I attended my first ATSI Convention in Bal Harbor, Florida twenty five years ago. The first Billing and Collections System aka BCS (and that has evolved into today’s Total Billing System or TBS) was signed that year and has seen so many advancements since then. Tele-Data Systems was working on mini-computers the size of a small refrigerator, and the new ‘state-of-the-art’ personal computers came with a whopping 64k of memory and enormous dual 360k Byte floppies for storage,” joked Hartmann.
Allen Kalik, President of Professional Teledata added, “It’s amazing to see that our company has evolved so very much, and that we are still forward-thinking to this day.”
The industry too has seen its share of development and evolution. Answering machines and voice mail posed a huge threat back in those days. Today, new threats like disaster recovery force the industry innovators to keep moving forward.
“The industry has seen many shifts and turns, we’re so very proud that our company was built and continues to stand on such a strong foundation,” concluded Kalik.
So where were you 25 years ago? Some interesting facts about 1983:
- Africa, Total Eclipse of the Heart, and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me were all on the Billboard Top 10 List
- Terms of Endearment swept the Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Supporting Actor
- The Washington Redskins beat the Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl
- The Supreme Court reaffirms its 1973 (Roe vs. Wade) Right to abortion
- Lotus 1-2-3 is released for IBM PC compatible computers
- The Olsen twins were not even born yet, neither was Miley Cyrus
- The average cost of a new home was $89,800
- The cost of a first-class stamp was $.20
- The average cost of a gallon of gas was $1.24
- Dale Schafer and Alan Hartmann still had hair
(Submitted by Diana Holland)