What Phones Looked Like the Decade You Were Born

Reader's Digest ^ | 11/14/22 | Morgan Cutalo

[DallasBiff]

Some elementary school kids don’t even know what a landline is. Take a trip down memory lane and remember the type of phone you used to use.

[x]

Somebody watched “Mad Men” closely enough to notice that the phones should have had black dials like that in the early seasons, rather than clear ones.

[Third Person]

take a look, helluva a phone book

[dfwgator]

My dad used to live in Sun Valley Idaho. Adam West lived there, and in the local phone book, he did this, and I actually saw it for myself, when I went to visit my Dad:

[PIF]

Fond memories of ringing up the operator.

[mass55th]

Born in ‘47. As a kid growing up in the 50’s in Rochester, New York, we had to wait for the operator to come on the line, in order to have her connect us to the party we wanted. The exchange number for Rochester back then was Genessee 8, then whatever the person’s home number was. We also had a party line at that time.

[mass55th]

"We had a rotary phone until the mid-70s."

Both my sisters worked for Rochester Telephone Company right out of high school. One started working there in 1958 and the other in 1960. After that, we always had the newest phones when they became available, specifically, the ones you only had to plug into a wall extension.

[larrytown]

[dinodino]

This is a dumbassed article. Everyone on this forum knows what telephones looked like, from the first iteration to the current.

[Chainmail]

Actually, my first phone was two tin cans connected by a piece of string…

Seriously, my first family phone number was POplar 55255 and my first girlfriend’s phone number was ORegon 03143 I have an excellent memory.

[depressed in 06]

My grandmother had a party line. We had to be quiet while she listened in to get the latest gossip.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

Our phones looked like their “1940” model, but our number was 258. Grandpa’s number was 22. Neither were party lines. It all stayed that way until the mid-50s, if I remember right.

Long distance, (like out of town) you dialed O and asked Miss Hosmer to connect you.

[Sacajaweau]

I lived in a big town adjacent to a big city. They were all over. The closest was next to the local super market.

[Sacajaweau]

I’m 80...I’m thinking about tattoos...

[Sacajaweau]

We listened, too...lol

[TexasGator]

“I lived in a big town adjacent to a big city. They were all over. The closest was next to the local super market.”

You lived next to the super market?

[C210N]

I used to have one of these babies... cool thing was that, when connected, it could "listen" to the phone line without opening the microphone circuit.

[vladimir998]

My family had a rotary phone until the summer of 1983.

[FlingWingFlyer]

ROTFL! Thanks. Our friends get so irritated at my wife and I because we are not chained to our cellphones. Ours spend a lot of their time in various hideouts throughout the house. When we go out, we normally don’t take them with us. We’re not cellphonies. The only reason we have them at all is to keep from having a land line. We check them every so often if somebody important is trying to contact us.

[Sacajaweau]

2 blocks away

[Rummyfan]

We still had a rotary wall set in the 70s.