It was cumbersome, but you could actually dial back then without the dial....just push the or holder up and down fast enough and it would dial the ‘number’.....
bump (or is it beep?)
Or use a demon dialer.
This was to minimize the pulse dialing overhead that would tie up the long distance lines without providing revenue.
Hence, NYC was 5 clicks, LA/Chicago 6 clicks, and Hawaii/Alaska 26 clicks.
Few people notice that they are still being charged for the “extra service” of touch tone dialing. You got to love AT&T.
You should still be able to dial that way.
(I have a rotary phone from the 1930s I can still make calls with)
It was possible to tap-dial calls that way out of some pay phones without the coin. I would not do that now (more honest now) but that seemed a cool trick at the time (mid seventies).
By the seventies touch tones were available most places in the USA. But in many locales all they did was to trigger pulse dialers on the telephone poles.