Do you guys remember rotary telephones?

found that wire long ago

DaveK said:
Yep > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Numbering_Plan

A cool thing about those rotary phones was their bell. It takes a bit of juice to get that striker ringing the bell. Every phone line, when ringing, drives the line with enough AC voltage to give one quite a shock if you happen to be working on the line at the time :yikes:
If you hung enough phones off one line, and that line was quite long, your bells would hardly ring if at all. I knew a man who mod'd his rotary, he cut the striker off with sidecutters so people wouldn't bother him ... he could dial out but heard no incoming calls ... his telecomm/datacomm company had to send a courier by his house letting him know when board meetings were scheduled.

These days electronic phones take a way less powerful signal to get them ringing (bleeping, boinging, or however you've programmed them), but I'll bet you still get a big shock from the phone line ... thanks to those long-gone bells.

Dave
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Dave,

I ran a service station nights and the pay phone was inside the office. Somebody would camp on that thing at closing time and I couldn't close and go play pool. Fortunately the phone line ran through the supply room. A little checking to find the hot wire which could indeed give quite a tingle, a toggle switch, and I closed when I wanted to! Ma Bell never did find my little modification.

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
Dave,

I ran a service station nights and the pay phone was inside the office. Somebody would camp on that thing at closing time and I couldn't close and go play pool. Fortunately the phone line ran through the supply room. A little checking to find the hot wire which could indeed give quite a tingle, a toggle switch, and I closed when I wanted to! Ma Bell never did find my little modification.

Hu
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:D Nice one ! In those days Ma Bell was quite a dominatrix ... you'd be lashed with 25-pair if you got caught.

Dave
 
Rod said:
Well if it has not been mentioned, I go back a little farther. In rural county Kansas, farm land, we had a crank phone. Our number was a Long and a Short. Meaning, you dialed a Long ring by one complete revolution of the crank and a half revolution for a Short ring. Not very many numbers on that party line. LOL I think the longest was 4 long rings and a short.

Oh our first rotary phone number was ME 30027. We were living high on the hog. :D

BTW Jay and I have the same Birthday I think mine, is the 17th. Nobody wished me happy birthday and I have more hair! LOL

Rod
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Happy Birthday Rod! You're two days older than me. :wink:
 
pt109 said:
Tramp...it's time to confess.
I think your family was involved with Bell from the start.
After all,the recommended greeting was originally 'AHOY'..
definitely a nautical term....
...so just admit it...you gave some Okie,transplanted to Burbank,
9-8 and squandered the Steamer fortune.You probably still twitch
every time you hear Ronnie Allen's name.
...so just say it,you'll feel better
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Actually pt, the true origin of the word 'ahoy' was attributed to the Steamer family.
Many years ago my Great Great Uncle Jebediah Steamer, who lived in Portsmouth, Maine and was the town drunk as well as the village idiot, came home snockered one night and found his wife had just given birth to their first son after six daughters. Uncle Jeb looked at the mid-wife and exclaimed. "Finally, ahoy!"
I almost certain that's a true story. :)
 
I had a car phone in the early 70's. It was mounted in the console of my 1970 Gran Prix (a very cool car). The main "box" was a shoe box sized contraption in the trunk. I believe it was a radio phone or something similar to what they use on boats. I could call anywhere in the USA with it, but it wasn't cheap. Cost me $50-100 a month for this luxury, a bunch back then. I was a real cool fool calling my friends in other cities. They couldn't believe I was on the road and calling them. I guess I was ahead of the curve for once. :)
 
perfect timing!

A friend who is a native born Texican sent me this a few minutes ago.


Copper wire:

After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, New York scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion, that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers, in the weeks that followed, a California archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, A story in the LA Times read: "California archaeologists, finding of 200 year old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network a hundred years earlier than the New Yorkers".

One week later. A local newspaper in Texas reported the following: "After digging as deep as 30 feet in his pasture near Maypearl, Texas, Bubba, a self-taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Bubba has therefore concluded that 300 years ago, Texas had already gone wireless".

Just makes a person proud to live in Texas, don't it?
 
cuesmith said:
IHe told me "no problem, this one will do fine. He started tapping out the numbers on the "hook button" one tap for 1, two taps for 2 etc... It worked fine as long as you didn't lose count, especially if the phone number you were dialing had mostly small numbers in it.
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Just tried this on my rotary but after 3 taps its says something like, "Sorry, the number you've reached is a non-working number."

This one's been on my basement workbench for many years...
 

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We had no telephone in the house when I was a kid. Neighbor took messages on their party line, they shared with 4 famalies with the money for a home phone.
 
True Story...

Up until the mid-1990's my mother was not only actively using rotary phones in our house, but was RENTING them from the phone company...

$15.00 A MONTH...!!

My sister and I went to her and said, "We can BUY you 100 rotary phones for like $10. You'll never run out."

And she just smiled at us like we were a couple of complete simpletons and replied, "Yes, yes, but these are "special" phones for "special" longtime customers of the phone company, and they come with a service plan where a technician will come out to your house if one breaks for a flat fee of $20 to fix it."

Oh...
 
calcuttaman said:
Just tried this on my rotary but after 3 taps its says something like, "Sorry, the number you've reached is a non-working number."

This one's been on my basement workbench for many years...
Click to expand...

You have to be very quick with the taps to replicate the rotary tone. If you practice it'll work but the 8's, 9's & 10's are really tricky. If you tap to slowly it wont work.
 
I remember when we got our NEW stickers to put on our rotary phones that reminded us of the NEW emergency line called 911.....lol....ya I'm old :D
 
I even remember having to get up, walk across the room and turn the TV dial to change channels.

ABC, NBC or CBS - take your pick - because that's all there was.
 
TCIndepMo said:
I even remember having to get up, walk across the room and turn the TV dial to change channels.

ABC, NBC or CBS - take your pick - because that's all there was.
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I remember that.

In our family - that's what the kids were for-channel changers when Dad was watching TV.

Our only revenge was going the long-wrong way from, let's say, channel 2 to 7, spinning the knob past all the channels, including the 'spanish stations' (UHF). That pissed off Dad.

That would get Dad up off the couch. Bad move to mess with Dad.
 
McKinneyMiner said:
True Story...

Up until the mid-1990's my mother was not only actively using rotary phones in our house, but was RENTING them from the phone company...

$15.00 A MONTH...!!

My sister and I went to her and said, "We can BUY you 100 rotary phones for like $10. You'll never run out."

And she just smiled at us like we were a couple of complete simpletons and replied, "Yes, yes, but these are "special" phones for "special" longtime customers of the phone company, and they come with a service plan where a technician will come out to your house if one breaks for a flat fee of $20 to fix it."

Oh...
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I had the same unpleasant realization with my mom. She had been renting the phone companys same telephone for nearly 15 years. When I found out I wanted to go to their offices and wrap the cord around someone's neck.

BTW, the water companies also had a similar scam. In our neck of the woods, the water utility companies rented their customers those $200 water heaters for something like $15 per month. They would last at least 10 years which, of course, is 120 months. Let's see, $15 x 120 months = $1800.00.

Those phone and water heater rentals were definitely like the geese that laid the golden eggs. :angry:

Best,
Brian kc
 
Mr Slate said:
I remember when we got our NEW stickers to put on our rotary phones that reminded us of the NEW emergency line called 911.....lol....ya I'm old :D
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Here's a bit of phone trivia. The emergency number Slate refers to began in earnest in New York City, and was called "Nine eleven" in the beginning. Well, believe it or not the city immediately began having trouble with emergency calls because some people couldn't find the number "eleven" on their telephone. When they started calling the new service "nine one one" the problems ended. :)
 
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I remember clicking those old phones or fooling with the hang-up button and if you did it right, the phone would just dial some random number.

I dont think the call appeared on the bill as my dad never yelled at me for it.

Dad also had the phone co. install a buzzer to wake me for school or whatever as my room was on the third floor. Probably 2 months after installation, i kicked it off the wall rendering it useless. Musta been 10-12 yrs later, he discovered he was still renting it at $10/month or close to it.
 
pooltchr said:
They were based on population. The most populated area (NYC) got the quickest area code to dial when using a rotary phone (212)

Steve
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Ding Ding Ding... we have a winner. :thumbup:

The most populated areas were assigned area codes using 1s, 2s, 3s and so on. The benefit was not to the dialers but rather to the system. Because the system was based on analog technology, the system could handle higher volumes of traffic if the individual numbers in the phone number were closer to 1 instead of being closer to 9.

I grew up during the 50s in the populated western Chicago burbs and our area code was 312.
 
cigardave said:
Ding Ding Ding... we have a winner. :thumbup:

The most populated areas were assigned area codes using 1s, 2s, 3s and so on. The benefit was not to the dialers but rather to the system. Because the system was based on analog technology, the system could handle higher volumes of traffic if the individual numbers in the phone number were closer to 1 instead of being closer to 9.

I grew up during the 50s in the populated western Chicago burbs and our area code was 312.
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I didnt think there were area codes til the 60's but im seeing 1951 on Wikipedia.

I was born in 48 and didnt make a LD call til i was at least 12- Didnt you have to get a long distance 'operator' and tell her the town and phone # ? (no area code) or did the area code exist but you couldnt dial it? Im confused. or maybe 914 where i lived didnt come around til then.
 
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