I started with a 300 bps modem (Novation AppleCat II, it could actually do 1200 half-duplex to another AppleCat II). From there a 2400 bps modem, then a 9600, then finally a 56k before I had ISDN, DSL, etc.
I remember the evolution in tones but never knew what they were till I took a signaling class in college. One of the projects in that class was to build visual transmitters. We'd stand outside a few hundred yards apart and see how fast we could transmit a message to a partner. The trick to being fast was encoding multiple bits in each symbol, but not so many you'd fumble around grabbing the next symbol. I think my transmitter encoded 2 bits at a time (so four symbols).
The early modems I had access to were 300/300 or 1200/75.
Ah! V.23.
The 75 baud backward channel of 1200/75 was good enough to keep up with typing so it was my preferred speed when accessing various things remotely where I never needed to send large amounts of text/data but had lots of data coming back the other way.
I remember the evolution in tones but never knew what they were till I took a signaling class in college. One of the projects in that class was to build visual transmitters. We'd stand outside a few hundred yards apart and see how fast we could transmit a message to a partner. The trick to being fast was encoding multiple bits in each symbol, but not so many you'd fumble around grabbing the next symbol. I think my transmitter encoded 2 bits at a time (so four symbols).
Aside, the Apple Cat II was a fascinating modem - http://www.jammed.com/~jwa/Machines/cat/