Enhanced Telephone

The Enhanced Telephone is a telephone developed by Citibank in the late 1980s for customers to do banking and other financial transactions from their home. The official launch date was February 26-27, 1990.

The first version of the Enhanced Telephone, the 99A model, was beige and featured a monochrome CRT screen. Because of its chunky appearance, several developers dubbed it the "sawed-off ski boot." [http://www.kmoser.com/computerhistory/?id=citibank Computer History - Citibank] ] The physical hardware was manufactured by Transaction Technologies Incorporated (TTI).

The second version of the Enhanced Telephone, the P100 model, was manufactured by Philips Electronics and featured an LCD screen and more sleek styling. The font was developed by Bitstream Inc..

Software for the Enhanced Telephone was written in a proprietary language called HAL (Home Application Language).

The Enhanced Telephone ultimately failed to become a viable product because by the time it was introduced, home banking via PCs was becoming more common. As the World Wide Web became popular in the early 1990s, the Enhanced Telephone was rendered obsolete.

The Philips P100 phone lived on and to this day variations of it are used for other applications.

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