How to use a dial phone, 1954, Public Service Announcement......

Twitter - X - / CitizenFreePress ^ | 8:38 AM · Jan 20, 2024 | Staff

[Red Badger]

Kids today: What's a 'dial'?......................

VIDEO AT LINK.......................

[NWFree]

lol I found it on the wall

[Leep]

With all this modern technology there is only about 5 features ..on a smart phone... I really like.
Totally could..and do..live without cable tv.
Don’t need a large screen TV.
Could probably live off grid and generally be okay.

[SaxxonWoods]

I see old movies that show phone numbers with mnemonics for the first two numbers..............

Yes, we were “Crestview” 4325, which meant: Dial “C(2), R(7)” plus 44325.

[COBOL2Java]

In the deep, dark recesses of my memory is our first phone number. It began, officially, with the letters DA, which stood for Davenport. DA was, of course, 3,2. We had no area codes when I first used a phone. If someone asked for the phone number, we would say “Davenport 2 - 2635.”

I remember a pseudo touch-tone phone that, when you pressed a number, you would still here the system dialing, like click-click-click.

I still remember my phone number when I was a kid: "EVergreen 6, 5292"

[COBOL2Java]

One of the best M*A*S*H scripts was Radar explaining time differences to Major Burns when making a phone call

Frank: Corporal.
Radar: Yes, sir.
Frank: I wanna make a stateside call. It's a New York number, Canal 7-9000.
Radar: Yes, sir. I'll get on it first thing tomorrow morning.
Frank: Well, I don't want it first thing in the morning. I want it first thing now!
Radar: Uh, well, I can't reach them now, sir. I'll be calling 'em yesterday.
Frank: That's ridiculous!
Radar: They're 16 hours behind us. Our today is their yesterday.
Frank: It's five o'clock in the afternoon!
Radar: Well, that's here, sir. Back there it's one o'clock yesterday morning. Everybody's gone to bed and said "See you tomorrow", which, by the time their tomorrow comes, will be our yesterday.
Frank: Isn't it 16 hours later there?
Radar: No, sir.
Frank: Well, what if it is? When would it be now there if it was our today here?
Radar: You see, we don't have the same now. By the time their now becomes our now, this'll be then.
Frank: OK, I think I got a bead on it. In order for me to talk to them at 9 o'clock in the morning their time, what time does it have to be our when?
Radar: Uh, one o'clock our tomorrow morning will get you 9 o'clock their today there, sir.
Frank: Then that's what we'll do.
Radar: Yes, sir. As soon as I get a circuit. There's a two-day wait.
Frank: I can't wait two days! That'll be... three days ago!
Radar: Right.

[usurper]

What I find amusing is that the computer icon for "save" is a 3.5" floppy disk, something that most people under 30 have never seen.

I think that's a 'hard disk'. The floopys were round but your point equally valid.

[Campion]

Uh, that's a 3.5" 'floppy' disk, although by then, they came in a hard plastic case that wasn't floppy anymore. Here's what an original floppy disk looked like:

That's an 8-inch floppy. When I was a co-op engineer in college in the early 1980s, the place where I worked had lab computers that used them, but they were already obsolete. Held 384k IIRC. That's kilobytes, not megabytes!

[Responsibility2nd]

Back in those days, I always wondered why “911” had a nine in it. With a rotary phone, it would add a couple extra seconds to dial the 9 and you would have to wait for your ambulance to come that much longer. So they should have made emergency calls “111”.

_______________________________________________________

Could be worse. Could be Great Britain where the emergency number is 999.

[metmom]

They’ll learn fast enough if the power grid goes down and we are forced back onto analog clocks.

[Robert A Cook PE]

The two letters were not mnemonic, but were the Bell Telephone “name” for the analog switching machine building. Thus, our old San Antonio TX (and two letter state abbreviations are also a “new thing” !) phone was Oldfield 5-0577. 655-0577).

The Bell Oldfield exchange building had floors and floors of switching machines. OL1. OL2. OL3, OL4, etc.

A smaller town (one earlier writer used Davenport IA as an example) might only have one building and two or three switching machines.

So, “tracing a call” literally meant hand-looking up every mechanical switch position for the seven numbers in the exchange, and writing down each contact position one by one. If the criminal or spy hung up before all 7 switches could found, the rotary contacts reset back to 0 for the next phone call.

[Red Badger]

We had 12 inch floppies...................

[Red Badger]

If the power grid goes down it won’t matter what the time is................................

[Responsibility2nd]

I would buy a used car from this guy, but the telephone number isn't working.

[SaxxonWoods]

Good comment, thanks. One of my Texas uncles worked for Ma Bell, had one of those old switch boards. Looked intimidating.

[Yo-Yo]

I think that's a 'hard disk'. The flo[p]pys were round but your point equally valid.

Looks like a 3.5" floppy disk to me.

[CodeJockey]

This is a pretty cool/nerdy video about how during the analog age you could do things with the analog system and make free calls etc.

https://youtu.be/4tHyZdtXULw?si=J96epqCSgD-j4yKv

[fatboy]

Mutual 1-3953

[PrairieLady2]

Evergreen? Ours was Evergreen 2-8489 when I was 6 years old.
Did we grow up near each other?

[faithhopecharity]

THANKS!
add “daylight savings time” and we get into a complete alternate universe

[Karoo]

Same