36 Years and 1800 Issues of TidBITS

@Shamino David C.
Tue, 05 May 2026 22:04:05 +0000

Michael Schmitt:

What was the typical modem speed back then?

With respect to the standards, the release dates for the most popular data rates were:

1962: Bell 103 / V.21 (300 bps)

1980: Bell 212A (1200 bps)

1984: V.22bis (2400 bps)

1984: V.32 (9600 bps)

1991: V.32bis (14.4K)

1994: V.34 (28.8K)

1996: V.34 (33.6K)

1998: V.90 (56K)

2000: V.92 (56K)

But with respect to what was popular and was used by normal human beings, the world was mostly 300 bps in 1984, with some people running at 1200.

When I started college in 1987, 1200 bps was cheap and common, and 2400 bps was not too expensive.

And everybody was running at 2400 from then until until dial-up Internet became a thing in the mid-90’s, when everybody started buying 14.4K and faster modems pretty much as fast as they were invented.

But all that having been said, serial ports were used for a lot more than modems. Even in the PC world, they were used for printers, plotters, and for connecting to hard-wired connections to servers (especially in business and academic environments). And for those uses, people wanted to drive the lines as fast as possible, with 9600 bps being a minimum, and faster speeds whenever possible.

h/t Wikipedia and the Linux Modem HOWTO file.