[TheForge] OT -phonees

Wed Jan 5 09:40:13 EST 2011

the central office had banks of dial pulse receivers and touch tone receivers waiting for you to access one ...when your phone went off hook the direction of the current flow signaled what type of receiver was needed

Jim Davis

Be who you are and say what you feel...Because those that matter, don't mind, and those that mind, don't matter! 

> From: Grover.Richardson at gtri.gatech.edu
> To: theforge at mailman.qth.net
> Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2011 13:36:48 +0000
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] OT -phonees
> 
> For years we had rotary dialing because it was cheaper. Then one day the wife forgot to switch the button, voila, she found out that our line did both. Cheaper for them at the time. 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:theforge-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of peter fels & phoebe palmer
> Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2011 1:59 PM
> To: Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA
> Subject: Re: [TheForge] OT -phonees
> 
> The friend referred to above used to laugh when he used our phone, cause he could hear the old relays clacking when it connected.
> When we were in PB, we had an 8 party line and local #s only had 4 digits.
> 
> On 1/4/2011 7:33 AM, Bruce Freeman wrote:
> > I STILL have pulse-dial phones!
> >
> > I had rotary-dial phones in '80 when I left CA and moved to NJ. When 
> > I got to NJ I found I couldn't call into Ma Bell anymore (tho I think 
> > it still existed then) and order up a telephone. I had to visit a 
> > sleek new "Phone Store" at a strip mall instead. Get to the store, 
> > and, to make a long story short, the clerk there tries to get me to 
> > take all sorts of features I don't need in a phone. Finally, she's 
> > got it down to a push-button phone. Then I ask the question, "Is this 
> > more expensive per month than a rotary phone?" Reluctant answer, 
> > "Yes." So I ordered up a rotary-dial phone.
> >
> > I kept that for years and probably still have it somewhere, but when 
> > Ma Bell broke up everybody and his brother started selling phones.
> > Many of these are dual-function tone-dial and pulse-dial. I simply 
> > switch to pulse-dial for dialing, and back to tone-dial for those.
> >
> > The funny part is that Verizon has to have hardware to decode my pulse 
> > phone dialing. It would probably be cheaper for them to switch to 
> > all-tone dialing. But then the bastards would be giving me a "free 
> > upgrade", and they'd never do THAT!
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 9:12 PM, Mike Spencer<mspencer at tallships.ca> wrote:
> >> PF wrote:
> >>
> >> On 1/3/2011 8:26 AM, Andrew Vida wrote:
> >>>> williamsiron at comcast.net wrote:
> >>>>> Dad still has rotary dial phones and no internet.
> >>>> Bless his heart.
> >>> I'd bet than no smartphone would survive regular use that long.
> >> We had roatary dial phones until 5 or 6 years ago. I had this little 
> >> script on my computer that would force the modem on-line, emit a 
> >> single dial tone and go off line, which took care of those&#@%%!!* 
> >> "For service in Tok Pisin please press 1" menu things. Then, when we 
> >> got 60hz hum on the line so bad that we couldn't use the net, it 
> >> happened that the service guys and linemen were on strike. Heh.
> >>
> >> Various management, accounting and marketing guys made 4 or 5 visits, 
> >> easiliy concluded that, yes, the problem lay outside the demarc, but 
> >> couldn't figure out the source. Finally, one management guy took off 
> >> in a snit (well, actually, in the service truck) to a switchgear 
> >> cabinet several miles away at the other end of the road, yanked a 
> >> circuit board and stuck in another one. Zap, all fixed.
> >>
> >> Um, but also Zap: pulse dial no longer supported. I felt sorry for 
> >> the poor, clueless dudes, at least one of whom didn't even know how 
> >> to strip the end of a wire. So instead of complaining, we just wired 
> >> up the 2500 sets my son had been collecting up for us for a few years.
> >> And they quit making those when? Circa 1986, I think. No cool 
> >> features but pre-divestiture indestructo hardware.
> >>
> >> Dragged kicking and screaming into the early 80s.
> >>
> >>
> >> - Mike
> >>
> >> --
> >> Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
> >> /V\
> >> mspencer at tallships.ca /( )\
> >> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
> >>
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