This post remined me of what I had almost forgotten.
In 1981 I purchased my first computers for use with my ranching and trucking business.
I purchased an Epson QX-10 and two Epson QX-16's, plus 11 Epson HX-20's.
The QX Computers were for my office work and the HX-20's were one each for my truck drivers.
1981 was before Algore invented the internet. With the HX-20's each driver received a phone connector that consisted of a fixture that permitted him to place a hand held phone receiver on the fixture plugged into the HX-20. Each day, the driver would dial my office computer phone number from a truckstop phone booth, when the connection was heard, the driver would then place the truck stop phone hand set on the HX-20 connection and the HX-20 would transfer data and recive data from my QX office computer.
This system worked well until I converted over to the Internet. In the 1980's Epson was the only company that provided computers suitable for the trucking industry and our ranches, and we were about the first to use them. This was before MicroSoft, etc. We used the ValDocs, TPA, operating system then. I still have a couple of the Epsons and I still use the Computers, but not the phone conections system.
For our ranch use, the Epson QX-16's still do things with our herd records, etc, that more modern computers cannot do. But they do not have Internet capability. And my drivers no longer use the HX-20's although I do use two of them personally for my own use.