Prior to the development of the pound lock in 984AD in China by Chhaio Wei-Yo and later in Europe in the 15th century, either flash locks consisting of a single gate were used or ramps, sometimes equipped with rollers, were used to change level.

Prior to the development of DTMF, numbers were dialed on automated telephone systems by means of pulse dialing ( Dial Pulse or DP in the U. S .) or loop disconnect ( LD ) signaling, which functions by rapidly disconnecting and re-connecting the calling party's telephone line, similar to flicking a light switch on and off.

Prior to the development of the campus, most of the site was cultivated with peach orchards, market gardens and poultry farms.

Prior to the development of SLR, all cameras with viewfinders had two optical light paths: one path through the lens to the film, and another path positioned above ( TLR or twin-lens reflex ) or to the side ( rangefinder ).

Prior to the development of transistors, vacuum ( electron ) tubes ( or in the UK " thermionic valves " or just " valves ") were the main active components in electronic equipment.

Prior to the development of the Boehm system, flutes were most commonly made of wood, with an inverse conical bore, eight keys, and tone holes ( the openings where the fingers are placed to produce specific notes ) that were small in size, and thus easily covered by the fingertips.

Prior to the development of metal movable type, most printing was done using blocks carved from wood.

Prior to the development of antivirals, when someone contracted a virus, there was little that could be done other than treating the symptoms and waiting for the disease to run its course.

Prior to the development of gachi muchi, the greatest overlap between yaoi and bara authors has been in BDSM-themed publications such as Zettai Reido, a yaoi anthology magazine which had a number of openly male contributors.

Prior to 1979, Iran's economic development was rapid.

Prior to the development of RBAC, the Bell-LaPadula model ( BLP ) model was synonymous with MAC and file system permissions were synonymous with DAC.

Prior to the development of the formal Juno award ceremonies, RPM Magazine began polling its readers in 1964 to determine which artists and groups were considered the best in Canada.

Prior to the development of fast SIMD floating-point processors, most digital implementations of RGB -> Y ' UV used integer math, in particular fixed-point approximations.

Prior to founding Mount Holyoke, Lyon contributed to the development of both Hartford Female Seminary and Ipswich Female Seminary.

Prior to its development as a small craft harbor, the land occupied by Marina del Rey was a salt-marsh fed by freshwater from the Ballona Creek, frequented by duck hunters and few others.

Prior to and during World War II, the naval bases of Point Mugu and Port Hueneme were established in the area to take advantage of the only major navigable port on California's coast between the Port of Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay, and the bases in turn encouraged the development of the defense-based aerospace and communications industries.

Baltimore architect Edward L. Palmer, Jr. was chosen to design the community, which was to have a mix of single family homes and smaller attached Prior to the development of houses.

Prior to development, the land that became Palm Beach Gardens was primarily cattle ranches and pine forests, as well as swampland further west.

Prior to development, Pine Lake was a portion of a farm.

Prior to the incorporation of the Village of Grand Cane in 1899, the settlement of four families ( Thomas Abington, Israel Rogers, Wright Hobgood, and John Wagner ) influenced the development of the area around two wagon trails that intersected in the sparsely populated area known as the Grand Cane Territory.

Prior to its development, the land consisted of peat soil, which was cultivated for the production of turf.

Prior to the development of the railroads through the state, Tyrone was on the Main Line Canal, Juniata Division, of the Pennsylvania Canal system.

Prior to the development of in vitro fertilization in the 1970s, all babies inherited their mitochondrial DNA from the woman in whose uterus they had developed.

Prior to this development, people relied on either private wells or the railroad well at Mesa.

Prior to the development of hotels and buildings, much of the area consisted of agricultural land.

Prior to the hiatus, the strip ’ s characters had aged at the tectonically slow rate standard for comic strips.

Prior to FORTRAN 77, a number of preprocessors were commonly used to provide a friendlier language, with the advantage that the preprocessed code could be compiled on any machine with a standard FORTRAN compiler.

Prior to the IEEE-754 standard, computers used many different forms of floating-point.

Prior to the codification of the standard language ( Standard Macedonian ), Macedonian dialects were described by linguists as being either dialects of Bulgarian or Serbian.

Prior to the advent of the microprocessor, a computer was usually built in a card-cage case or mainframe with components connected by a backplane consisting of a set of slots themselves connected with wires ; in very old designs the wires were discrete connections between card connector pins, but printed circuit boards soon became the standard practice.

Prior to this, the standard measure of 72. 27 points per inch was used in typeface design, graphic design, typesetting and printing.

Prior to the introduction of standard time, each municipality around the civilized world set its official clock, if it had one, according to the local position of the Sun ( see solar time ).

Prior to the IEEE standard, programmers often used a special value ( such as − 99999999 ) to represent undefined or missing values, but there was no guarantee that they would be handled consistently or correctly.

Prior to the Elkins Act, the livestock and petroleum industries paid standard rail shipping rates, but then would demand that the railroad company give them rebates.

Prior to the decision of the House of Lords in Re B ( A Child ) UKHL 35 http :// www. publications. parliament. uk / pa / ld200708 / ldjudgmt / jd080611 / child-1. htm there had been some confusion-even at the Court of Appeal-as to whether there was some intermediate standard, described as the ' heightened standard '.

Prior to the introduction of BS 25999, BCP professionals relied on information security standard BS 7799, which only peripherally addressed BCP to improve an organization's information security procedures.

Prior to the introduction of the 802. 1Q standard, several proprietary protocols existed, such as Cisco's ISL ( Inter-Switch Link ) and 3Com's VLT ( Virtual LAN Trunk ).

Prior to the debuts, fifteen-minute-long shows had been the standard.

Prior to that time the standard. 38 Special was very close to today's "+ P " cartridges.

Prior to and throughout most of the 20th century, common standard psychology viewed homosexuality in terms of pathological models as a mental illness.

Prior to their arrival, extensive improvements were made to ensure that the building would provide standard of accommodation appropriate for members of the Royal Family.

Prior to the DDC, the VGA standard had reserved four pins in the analog VGA connector, known as ID0, ID1, ID2 and ID3 ( pins 11, 12, 4 and 15 ) for identification of monitor type.

Prior to and during this firestorm, when this was not standard equipment, firefighters were sometimes forced to don turn-outs which greatly hampered their ability to move quickly and stay cooler during a wildland fire.

Prior to the introduction of the IBM PC there was no unique accepted standard for entering, displaying, printing, or storing the £ sign in the UK computer industry.

Prior to 1954, the 235 and 216 cubic inch six cylinder engines had babbit bearings and scoops to create oil pressure at the bottom of each rod and the oil pressure was standard at 15-30 PSI.

Prior to this, it had been standard practice for a cowbell to be attached to only the best and leading piece of livestock.