Talk:Simplex communication
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[edit] Reason for ANSI standard?
Back in the day (ever since Edison's patent at least), a telegraph was a single circuit, used to send in both directions, but only one way at a time. That's just the way things worked. When cabling was developed that allowed traffic in both directions at the same time, that was called duplex, and the old way was referred to as simplex.
Given that duplex has a path always open in each direction, half of that would be a path always open in one direction. Assuming the words mean anything, that would seem to be the definition of half-duplex that makes sense.
A source I trust says that IBM got the definitions of "simplex" and "half-duplex" backwards in one of their glossaries, and that glossary was adopted as the standard. Of course most web sites now parrot the ANSI standard point of view. Is there any good reason other than a mistake behind the ANSI version of the definition? Dpv 15:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
