What Are Rotary Dial Phones and How Do They Work?

Interesting Engineering ^ | 6/5/21 | Christopher McFadden

[DallasBiff]

The rotary dial phone was once the be all and end all of the telephones. Like the cellphone of today, everybody had one, and they ruled domestic communications for decades.

But that all changed in the 1980s when they were supplanted by a new upstart, push-button telephones. Their days were numbered (pun intended).

Many born after the 1990s have likely never seen one, which is a shame. But for those who do remember, join us as we take a trip back in time in remembrance of this glorious piece of telecommunications history.

[ByteMercenary]

Way back in the early 80s when push-button phones were established as the technology to use, while driving on a trip home I heard a radio show that was holding a contest regarding the use of rotary-dial verbiage and how it was being applied to the new phones. Of the many terms discussed the one that had most interest was ‘dial the phone’. After all how does one ‘dial’ a push-button phone?

So the DJ held an impromptu contest the winner of which would be the best explanation of ‘dial the phone’. The run away winner postulated that ‘dial’ had transitioned from a verb to an acronym to wit:

D)igitally (as in fingers)
I)nitiated
A)nologue
L)ink

I never forgot that.

[Jamestown1630]

In my area, they deactivated all of the land-line outlets when Fios came in. How would I use my old phone here without converting it somehow? Will it connect just like the Ooma VOIP does?

(Not smart about these things but love my old rotary phone.)

[old-ager]

> one-transistor DTMF generator

I did not know that. Your post made my day.

I was not quite old or connected enough to become a phone phreak, but I did do a little experiment to see if audio could be sent to a caller without picking up an incoming call. I put the high impedance side of an audio output transformer on the line and put audio into the low impedance side, then drove up to the gas station and called home. I could hear the audio. The high side of the transformer did not take the line off hook, but with audio going out at a voltage competitie with the ring voltage, I could hear the sound on the calling end.

Also I hope every kid who was interested in the phone system figured out how to dial out without using the dial.

[old-ager]

I have been meaning to see if my little GV-to-wire adapter will process pulses. I’ll be back.

[Jamestown1630]

That’s really hard to understand; using a rotary phone seems kind of intuitive to me; but I’m old :-)

[Tipllub]

Touch tone was out LONG before the 80s. It did result in an upcharge on the phone bill if you elected for touch tone.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

If they did not want it used that way they would not have put a handy dandy handle on it. :)

[MeganC]

Those phones were HEAVY!!! Like seven or eight pounds. The handle would have been very handy indeed!

[Fresh Wind]

Back in the 60s you could dial your own number and of course you would get the beeping busy signal with quiet between the beeps. What people discovered was that if two or more people did that, their phones were actually connected together, and you could talk between the beeps and communicate that way.

Eventually, the phone company discovered what was happening, and they changed the busy signal to be a constant tone with louder beeps. That ended the party.

[BlueLancer]

finally - something that will break the millenials.

Along with manual transmissions ...

[sasquatch]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledeltos

[Bigg Red]

Thanks for that explanation.

[megaMAGA]

Has everyone forgotten……

Beechwood 4-5789

[AF_Blue]

Well, since you asked...yes, it's true.

United States Naval Observatory Precise Time Department

[null and void]

We were Elgin and then Pelham. You could ‘dial’ 4 digits within the exchange to call a neighbor or 7 digits to call another local exchange. Thus we were 0178 and 5550, respectively.

You didn't take Pelham 123?

[srmanuel]

Every article I’ve seen said 1954 they were first introduced and even then they weren’t widely available

[sasquatch]

A friend had a wall phone who’s brother broke it off the wall with a crutch. Jock got tired of answering Dan’s calls. Jock was in a leg cast... the phone was in the kitchen...

[null and void]

I remember ... as kids, calling the operator to ask what time it is lol.

Now you can't even call POPCORN to get the time of day.

[Fresh Wind]

Of course, Bell Labs invented the transistor. Change the world? Absolutely!

They called it the "crystal triode".

[srmanuel]

A lot of those early push button phones had rotary dial mechanisms and did not use the current DTMF signaling