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What Phones Looked Like the Decade You Were Born
Reader's Digest ^ | 11/14/22 | Morgan Cutolo

Posted on 07/07/2024 4:44:37 PM PDT by DallasBiff

1950s

The design of the telephone didn’t change much from the ’40s to the ’50s, but the mechanics of it sure did. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the numbers and letters are placed around the rotary so that people could view them more easily when dialing, and it also had an adjustable volume control. This style phone is the Western Electric model 500 Rotary. It was designed by Henry Dreyfus and was used as the Bell System’s mainstay telephone from the 1950s through the 1980s.

(Excerpt) Read more at rd.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; History; Society
KEYWORDS: ehat; landline; phone
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To: Buttons12

On rotary phones, the 7, 8, 9, 0 took forever!


41 posted on 07/07/2024 5:44:14 PM PDT by Indy Pendance (Jesus can't get here soon enough!)
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To: dangus
And 30 cents a minute for “long distance.”

If you wait until 11:00 P.M., the rates drop 70%.
42 posted on 07/07/2024 5:45:04 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye." (John 2:5))
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To: EnderWiggin1970

I always made sure we had a $10 corded landlines for power outages.


43 posted on 07/07/2024 5:47:59 PM PDT by Chicory (Well, )
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To: DallasBiff

Had a rotary phone the first 10-15 years of my life. There were push button phones around but my parents said the rotary works, there’s no reason to change it.


44 posted on 07/07/2024 5:48:33 PM PDT by vpintheak (Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. )
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To: Paladin2
“Is that designed to make or receive crank calls”

Oh gawd, one of the biggest crank calls looking through the white pages, "Is your refridgeorator running? If so you better get it before it runs down the street"/

45 posted on 07/07/2024 5:49:00 PM PDT by DallasBiff (Apology not accepted.la is not the sharpest knife in the drawer)
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To: firebrand

We had that for a while also. Everyone in the neighborhood knew everybody else’s business. Was probably the first social media!


46 posted on 07/07/2024 5:51:49 PM PDT by Omnivore-Dan
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To: All

We (PA) didn’t have a push button phone until the breakup of Bell.


47 posted on 07/07/2024 5:54:59 PM PDT by FLNittany (Autotune is jealous of Karen Carpenter)
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To: vpintheak

Rotaries are digital.

Touch-Tones were analog.


48 posted on 07/07/2024 5:54:59 PM PDT by Paladin2 (Get off my phone, you big dope.)
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To: DallasBiff

and the beauty was you paid rent on that phone to ATT


49 posted on 07/07/2024 5:57:18 PM PDT by joshua c
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To: DallasBiff

Our daughter was born in the late 80’s. By the time she was about 10 we had wireless landlines for a while, and when she saw a rotary phone for the first time. She asked, “What’s the wire for?”. Couldn’t understand how you could connect to more than 1 person, she thought you would need a wire for each number.


50 posted on 07/07/2024 5:57:49 PM PDT by Omnivore-Dan
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To: Sarcazmo

Rotary phones did wonders for my memory—I knew all the first-three-number codes and where they covered — later I had a job where I called all over the country and knew a lot of area codes as well — and I learned to make little equations and stuff for the last 4 numbers,

Then the push button phones came in and I lazily just memorized the shapes.


51 posted on 07/07/2024 5:58:07 PM PDT by Chicory (Well, )
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To: DallasBiff

Volume control?
You just yell at the person on the other end to talk louder.


52 posted on 07/07/2024 5:59:02 PM PDT by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> --- )
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To: Indy Pendance

With a little practice, you could tell what number someone was calling just by listening to the phone being dialed.


53 posted on 07/07/2024 6:02:52 PM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: MayflowerMadam

as the Mayflower Madam you musta met a number of men who had no impulse control or “coping skills”. You aware he killed himself as per this post, because he contracted a fatal disease, right?


54 posted on 07/07/2024 6:06:09 PM PDT by supremedoctrine
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To: DallasBiff

I was born in the early 1930s. The family phone was an upright with no dial. You have to jiggle the receiver hook to raise the operator and give her the local area name and number you were calling. I remember our area and number was “Sheppard-1419.” The operator would answer, “number please?” My uncle’s farm had wooden phone box on the wall with a crank you hand turned to create the power to raise the operator.


55 posted on 07/07/2024 6:06:58 PM PDT by Hiddigeigei ("Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish," said Dionysus - Euripides)
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To: Leaning Right

THERE IT IS! That’s the one I remember as a child, and it was the only phone within miles arou9nd. Us poor folks would go to my Grandparents if it was an emergency, even for us a mile from them. The phone and grandparents were still there for years after we left when I was 8-9. War #2. I think we had a lift phone then.


56 posted on 07/07/2024 6:11:22 PM PDT by WVNan
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To: Dr. Sivana

Very smart!


57 posted on 07/07/2024 6:13:06 PM PDT by HombreSecreto (The life of a repo man is always intense)
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To: Omnivore-Dan

You are getting closer to my memories. lift the ear phone with the phone was on the wall. Joint use.


58 posted on 07/07/2024 6:15:48 PM PDT by WVNan
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To: supremedoctrine

I did. He’s gone.


59 posted on 07/07/2024 6:16:17 PM PDT by MayflowerMadam (Bannon didn't kill himself.)
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To: FreedomPoster
The Pentagon had so many telephones that Western Electric set up a telephone manufacturing plant directly adjacent to the Pentagon.

60 posted on 07/07/2024 6:18:51 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie (LORD, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.)
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