How to Dial a Telephone

Youtube ^

[fishtank]

I guess there's LOTS of people now who never had to learn to dial a telephone!!!

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

You know the old joke about drummers?

“What do you call a drunk who follows the band around?”

[higgmeister]

Some may even remember that toggling the hook-switch on and off would signal the operator.

[dmz]

What did the drummer do to be listed after your wife?

Good question. He's been in the band for 4 years and the bass player only 1 year.

I'll chalk it up to the simple question "why would you talk about music with a drummer?"

Ducking.

[dmz]

see my #23

[fishtank]

There’s a Tiger Woods joke in there somewhere...........................

[Gator113]

And the party lines.

[firebrand]

You could never imitate those pompous, overdramatic voices today if you tried. They just scream “I’m important and you’re not.”

[BitWielder1]

Once when I was very young, I used to dial whole numbers just using the hangup switch and never touching the dial.
Why? Well, it amused me at the time that it was possible.
Then I heard bout a blind guy who could whistle the touch-tone notes and I knew I was bested.

[OrioleFan]

Ah, the party lines - there were no secrets in our little neighborhood.

[BulletBobCo]

The switch to direct dial in my little northern Indiana city took place on November 22, 1963.

I believe there was another switch that took place on that date as well.

[Yaelle]

Now THAT is hilarious. How far will we be in another 80 years?

[CholeraJoe]

I still frequently see women 60 and older with isolated arthritis of the index finger’s last joint on one hand from dialing telephones for so many years. Check the hands of many women in nursing homes and you’ll find it.

[Yaelle]

I remember always calling the operator and asking for an Emergency Breakthrough to reach my teen girlfriends who were busy talking to each other, when I wanted to get through. We did this pretty much DAILY. The operator would break through the call personally to tell the girl she had an emergency breakthrough from me. The emergencies probably involved which boy talked to us between fourth and fifth period.

[Brett66]

I actually force myself to dial a few numbers so I have to remember them.

[Verginius Rufus]

November 22, 1963? Your little northern Indiana city entered a “brave new world” on the very day that Aldous Huxley died.

[Madam Theophilus]

Our newly formed Presbyterian church just purchased an old Methodist church building. There was a dial phone left behind in one of the classrooms. I was amused to watch almost all the children not even recognize it as a phone!

[married21]

1. I loved the old dial phones, and the jingly ringing sound, not blips or musical ringtones.
2. Sometimes when calling a business with a phone tree, they still direct you to wait for an operator to direct your call “if you do not have a touchtone phone.” I always wait for the operator, but wonder what will happen to her now that everybody uses a “touchtone phone”.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

My mom tells the story from her childhood when telephones first became a common household feature.
A prankster called, identifying herself as Miss Smith from the telephone company, warning that the phone lines had collected quite a bit of soot and were to be blown out with compressed air Saturday morning. It was advised that a plastic bread bag should be placed over the phone to catch the soot and under no circumstances should the phone be answered.
Naturally, Saturday morning, a call was placed to my mom, who let the phone ring and ring. She finally took the bag off the phone and hurriedly shouted, “They're cleaning out the lines, you idiot. Didn't you get the message ?”

[Grams A]

Not sure how much more history some of us can stand to live through. We had a 12 party crank phone high on the wall. Stood on a stool to reach it. Our ring was one long and one short. People with one long and two shorts were gone a lot so someone always answered and said, “They’re probably not home!” Certainly no privacy back then but if you had a problem, you could always quickly get some help - I prefer to call it the early version of neighborhood email or tweeting. Then we really were uptown when my mom got a raise and we went to an expensive two party line. Then to a dial phone - CY9 prefix was for the townies, SU8 prefix was for we country folks. You could always tell where someone lived because of their prefix. Remember my dad blasting the “new fangled stuff with all those extra buttons” and what a waste of good money he felt it was - the * and the # which we couldn’t survive without today.

[Constitution Day]

for later amusement