Remembering The Dial Telephone

I still have a white rotary phone that I use to test my line with if I'm having problems. It's not like one of the new electronic ones...there's nothing to go wrong with it. I know if I don't get a dial tone with it, it's the line.

Regarding the tone-driven menus...you can buy a pulse-to-tone converter that plugs in to the wall jack and then plugs in to your phone. No power required. The above link has them for $45 + $3 postage. Amazon sells the exact same unit for $63.

 

I love the way your find topic-specific cartoons. It's majuk!!!

 

I worked for a company that installed and monitored security systems in office buildings. Before we went solid-state, the control panels used relays...lots of different relays

The owner had an old crank phone in his house he rigged up with a relay so that when he cranked the thing, the relay would pulse 10 times and ring up the operator.

"Sarah? Get me Milly."

 

I remember the crank telephone. Our "number" was short-short-long.

 

We were on a party line in Indiana and then for some years in Virginia, but with rotary phones.

There were 6 kids in my family and we shared a line with the elderly couple next door. I guess she found our conversations to be interesting, so you learned to say something mean about her and wait to hear the *click*, then you were OK to converse.

 

We were on a party-line until I was in the tenth grade, I think.

 

I recall when the names for Exchanges were used.

EM2-7123 in Crawfordsville, Indiana was Emerson2-7123. Now it's just 362-7123.
JA4-2412 in Arlington VA was Jackson4-2412. Now it's just 524-2412.

You can hear this syntax being used in old TV shows.

And don't forget to add the Area Code for all your calls, not just long distance.

 

I always liked it when they had to tell Sarah why they were calling somebody before she would actually put the call through. Three minutes spent negotiating with the operator to have a 60 second conversation.

Yet one more "I'll have this for life" job gone *poof!* by technology.

 

I wonder if they were all named Sarah? I was pretty young when we had the crank telephone. I only remember our "number" because we were told not to answer the phone unless it was two short rings followed by a longer one. Anytime anyone on the party line got a call, the phone would ring at everyone's house and you had to listen for your own. To make a call, you would take the receiver off the handle and crank the phone, and the operator would answer. I remember my mom could tell the operator who she wanted to be connected to using only their first names.