Hi
two artists in Canada (of course

) did the telephonic arm-wrestling thing 21 years ago: Norman White and Doug Back.
Here's a photo of the piece:

And a description:
Telephonic Arm Wrestling (1986). A collaborative telecommunications project undertaken by myself and fellow artist, Doug Back. The idea was to allow contestants in two different cities to arm-wrestle, using motorized force-transmitting systems interconnected by a telephone data link. First successfully exhibited during a 1986 link-up between the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, and the Artculture Resource Centre, Toronto. Sponsored by the McLuhan Programme (Director: Prof. Derrick DeKerkhove), University of Toronto. Materials: Steel, Plexiglas, motors, custom electronics. Owned by Doug Back and myself.
Check out
Norman's site. He was doing twenty years ago some of the things that are being done today with Arduino and 'physical computing', but with TTL logic and 8080 processors, and sometimes even -GASP- no processor! and he publishes schematics for things..
here's the schematic for the arm-wrestler.
In Canada these guys are seen as pioneers in the whole physical interaction-computing field.
D