Happy Birthday PDQ

Congratulations – something to tell your grandchildren! Where was the first merchant? Surely they deserve a blue plaque?

First terminal was at Miss Selfridge, Brent Cross Shopping Centre, London. First purchase a Grey and White Stripped Blouse bought by Liz Talbot.

Nick

Do you remember the precursor of the PDQ, the authorisation telehone?

Oldies unite!

I remember being persuaded by Roger Alexander of Barclaycard that PDQ was the right model to be adopted by EftPos UK - that must have been about 1987.  And before that, I recommended installation of authorisation telephones (weren't they called "transaction telephones" Aidan?) at a client called Club 24 in about 1983.

Happy days!

Nick

I think they started life as Transaction Teephones but then Barclaycard re-branded them something else (I can't remeber - Bria Wilde probaly will). The Access ones were branded  as ACTEL devices.

Happy birthday PDQ - I will raise a glass this lunchtime

Club24 and Authorisation telephones - looks like the 'old gents' are around and I include myself in that as I remember them both well.

OK Guys:

Authorisation Telephones - Barclaycard's brand was Cardsure and they were either Racal TCL100's or STC Telechecks. The next Racal was the TCL110 and Fortronic bought the APACS30 technology in the STC Telecheck to put in the F75. All the Auth Telephones were then given to Online Card Services (OLCS) the company set up by Barclaycard, Access, Diners and Amex - Can you believe it was going to be called Bank Online Card Services! Barclaycard also had some Auth Phones from Ericsson that all us 'engineers' had because the display was so bright you could get dressed without putting the light on when called out because a BT Pad had gone down.

I seem to remeber that the TCL200 only hand 128k of memory and you reprogrammed it by swapping EEPROMS!

Just came across this, so a bit late for the celebrations. But I worked for Racal Transcom at the time, so if it was a trusty old TCL100, I would have certainly worked on it, seems so long ago! Could not even find a photo on the web of one, how quickly things fade away.