System locations in the Boston and Phoenix area. The overall project was described in the Bell Laboratories Record, Volume 45 (1967). In 1966, George Sweigert submitted a patent application for a "full duplex wireless communications apparatus". He was awarded in June 1969. Sweigert, a radio operator in World War II stationed at the South Pacific Islands of Guadalcanal and Bougainville, developed the full duplex concept for untrained personnel, to improve battlefield communications for senior commanders. Sweigert was an active proponent for directly coupling consumer electronics to the AT&T-owned telephone lines in the late 1960s. The telephone companies at the time did not permit third-party equipment to be connected to their lines; most telephones were made by Western Electric and leased to the customer by AT&T. The Carterfone coupler, a crude device for interconnecting a two-way radio with the telephone, led to the reversal of the Federal Communications Commission ban on direct coupling of consumer equipment to phone lines (known as the landmark Carterfone decision) on June 26, 1968. The original cordless phones, like the Carterfone, were acoustically (not electrically) connected to the public telephone network. In 1977, Douglas G. Talley and L Duane Gregory were granted for a duplex voice communication link including controls provided between a base station connected directly to a telephone line of a telephone exchange and a mobile unit consisting of a small, compact cordless telephone instrument containing transmitter, receiver and control circuits powered by a rechargeable battery pack. A single logic tone is transmitted and detected for all logical control for ring signals, on-hook and off-hook signals and dial pulses. Cordless phones became widely used in home and workplaces during the early 1980s. According to The New York Times, the number of cordless phones sold in the United States grew from 50,000 in 1980 to 1 million in 1982. They quickly became popular because of their convenience and portability, despite fears that their reliance on radio signals would make them vulnerable to eavesdropping or other malfeasance. In 1994, digital cordless phones in the 900 MHz frequency range became available to consumers. These new types of phones provided better audio quality because it could filter out interference and its signals could penetrate walls more easily. Digital signals allowed the phones to be more secure and decreased eavesdropping; it was relatively easy to eavesdrop on analog cordless phone conversations. In 1995 digital spread spectrum (DSS) was introduced