Posted on 05/05/2016 5:03:45 AM PDT by harpygoddess
"Hang up the phone." comes from one specific kind of land-line phone that had a kind of hook you'd hang the handset from when you were done. Doing so would pull down the hook that was connected to a switch inside the phone that would disconnect the line.
And lots of nautical stuff:
Groggy - In 1740, British Admiral Vernon (whose nickname was "Old Grogram" for the cloak of grogram which he wore) ordered that the sailors' daily ration of rum be diluted with water. The men called the mixture "grog". A sailor who drank too much grog was "groggy".
Leeway - The weather side of a ship is the side from which the wind is blowing. The Lee side is the side of the ship sheltered from the wind. A lee shore is a shore that is downwind of a ship. If a ship does not have enough "leeway" it is in danger of being driven onto the shore.
Pipe Down - Means stop talking and be quiet. The Pipe Down was the last signal from the Bosun's pipe each day which meant "lights out" and "silence".
Slush Fund - A slushy slurry of fat was obtained by boiling or scraping the empty salted meat storage barrels. This stuff called "slush" was often sold ashore by the ship's cook for the benefit of himself or the crew. The money so derived became known as a slush fund.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
My sister in law worked for the phone company too, as an operator. My brother “met” her through her assisting him making calls, he had to do some detective work to find out who she was and get someone to actually introduce them so he could ask her out.
For a couple of years in college I ran the switchboard for the dorms with the trunk system- plugging cords in to manually place calls for people on campus. We had to dial long distance calls for the students too. Replaced it with a PBX board right after I left.
My dad did trunk stuff too!
I never understood it. He said it involved manually plugging big wires into stuff.
How funny!
That is another thing, people used to prank each other and “pick on” each other in fun and now that is considered part of bullying. Bullying is bad but like everything else they have taken it too far.
The one I ran was pretty basic, holes had numbers for dorm rooms. If a student wanted to call another room they called the operater (me when I was on duty)- we literally plugged a cord from room# to room# on the board and rang the room they were calling. Lights would go on while call was in progress and when they hung up the light went out and you unplugged that cord. If they wanted to make a long distance call we would plug their room into the outgoing or “outside line” and dial it for them or connect them to an operator for some calls. In the evenings it would get hectic and we could end up disconnecting the wrong cord or connecting people to the wrong room. They were not too happy but when we were busy that board looked like a wad of spaghetti with all the cords going every which direction.
I can only imagine what being an operator for a large system would have been like...
In glass bottles, with little cardboard stoppers and a pleated, heavy paper cap. He'd leave them in an insulated, galvanized sheet metal box.
Even in an apt. building with "dairy cupboards"? I remember the milkman bringing a wire basket to the front door.
Took me forever to stop slapping the carriage return!
If you are cruising from New York to Great Britain, you must post passage as POSH — port over, starboard home. Has to do with “leeward” already posted here. Or it could be vice-versa, Great Britain to New York. It could also have to do with the sun.
In other words, I don’t really know! Never traveled on a ship from New York to Great Britain. Have never been in either place.
Would that be Ma Bell? General Telephone had a small portion of Southern California, too. Very small. Ma Bell could not be considered a monopoly then.
Remembered another one: Carbon copy. It was paper sheets with carbon paper in between each sheet. You could only have an original and seven copies. The typewriters could not take more than that amount of paper. The seventh carbon copy was always sloppy.
You learned never to make errors typing. Erasing each copy was a horrible experience that slowed your labor down tremendously.
I did just that. I was a long distance operator from 1968 through 1970 in Southern California.
Remember the very expensive “person to person” collect calls?
You had to use three plugs for that call because you weren’t allowed for the caller to speak to anyone on the other end (the person they were calling).
So many times people used this to their advantage. They would call person to person to a John Wayne who would then not accept the charges. Trick. Whoever they called knew the person was safe for whatever reason without having to pay for the common collect call.
I also worked on mobile calls (super expensive). You had to break into the call every minute to remind the caller of the time they were using.
Also worked the teletype machine there. What a trip that was!
Ahh, Ma Bell!
That had to be a really hectic job!
I do remember those phone tricks people used to do to beat up Ma Bell. Sunday evenings when people were getting back to campus they would be making person to person calls to all sorts of celebrities. The dorm mother’s (I bet there is no such thing now) would lecture them about the dishonesty of such calls but I don’t remember that having any effect.
Frosting the Wave: Used in popular speech to indicate excessive speed, this refers to an interstellar craft seating itself between two propagating warp waves, allowing for FTL spaceflight. This area of space tends to leech temperatures in the zone, thus, "Frosting".
Cool Your Tubes: Used in popular speech tell someone to proceed more carefully, this refers to the need to allow particle weapon proton tubes a few seconds to 'cool' between shots.
Sparking: Used in popular speech to indicate instantaneous arrival, this refers to the sparking effect when transporting dematerializer/rematerializers are employed.
There are many more examples.
I was not the greatest typist and went to work in an office where we were not allowed to erase or use white out. We were typing business letters as part of bookkeeping which was my actual job. If we made an error we had to retype. I became a better typist and I thought the world’s greatest invention was the correction typewriters!
Very close: But Great Britain to India. In the days of the first steamships and their earlier packet ship ancestors (no A/C, no electricity, no fans) after the Suez Canal was opened up. Crossing the Med and Indian Ocean eastbound (outbound from London), the right side of the ship (starboard) was in the sunshine and was - well, extremely hot. The Port side was cool and shaded.
Home bound from India, the starboard side was cool, and the port side was in the sunshine and was hot.
So: Port Out Starboard Home. POSH service.
Umm, Laz, were you a surfer in a prior live? “Catchin’ a wave” was a phrase for getting the wave at its peak, and then surfing all the way to the shore or something like that if you didn’t wipe out.
Shooting the curl was when the wave was breaking on top of you, but you got through “the pipe line” of the wave.
Your third one, “Sparking” meant nothing in surferease. You did not hang ten on that one...
You are just so darned brilliant, Robert! I knew it had to do with cruising, and I kind of knew the words. So I faked it! I knew someone would correct me. Glad it was you!
I had tremendous eye/hand/ear coordination. Gift from the Good Lord! I tested out on an electronic typewriter with no carriage return at 130 wpm. Really. No errors. From a typing book on my left side.
I ended up becoming a court reporter in court. Then the hands and arms got ruined for-e-ver, so I became a trader. I think I did things backwards. I then got married, and became a housewife. God blessed me again with the best husband ever!
I can honestly say I have had the best life that I could possibly have imagined. Just sweet!
I had an aunt that won a state typing contest when she was in high school and was hired in a state job typing in the governor’s office. I have no idea how fast she typed but her fingers would fly! I had never thought about the eye/hand + ear combination. That makes a lot of sense!
Sounds like you have a great life! I am happy with mine too, I have had a great one as well.
My sister (Helen) was a scholarship typist back in Maryland - That skill paid her way through trade school and many years work in the DC area. Now married, now a logistics manager on the other side of Atlanta running imports (loading and unloading and scheduling trains, ships, planes) and coordinating business orders and stores.
When skills were rewarded!
bkmk
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