http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_dial
The first patent for a rotary dial was filed by Almon Brown Strowger on December 21, 1891, which was awarded to him on November 29, 1892 as U.S. Patent 486,909.[1][2] The early forms of a rotary dial used lugs on a finger plate instead of holes and the pulse train was generated without the control of spring action or a governor on the forward movement of the wheel, which proved to be difficult to operate correctly. The commonly known appearance of the rotary dial with finger holes was first introduced in 1904 but did not enter service in the Bell System in the United States until 1919,[citation needed] when AT&T abandoned its determined reliance on manual exchanges, and embraced automatic switching.
From the 1960s onward, the rotary dial was gradually supplanted by dual-tone multi-frequency push-button dialing, first introduced to the public at the 1962 World’s Fair (Seattle, WA) under the trade name Touch-Tone®. Touch-tone technology primarily used a keypad in form of a rectangular array of push-buttons for dialing.
From as early as 1836 onward, various suggestions and inventions of dials for sending telegraph signals were reported. After the first commercial telephone exchange was installed in 1878, the need for an automated, user-controlled method of directing a telephone call became apparent. Addressing the technical shortcomings, Almon Brown Strowger inventing a telephone dial in 1891.[3] Before 1891, numerous competing inventions, and 26 patents for dials, push-buttons, and similar mechanisms, specified methods of signalling a destination telephone station that a subscriber wanted to call. Most inventions involved costly, intricate mechanisms and required the user to perform complex manipulations.
The first commercial installation of a telephone dial accompanied the first commercial installation of a 99-line automatic telephone exchange in La Porte, Indiana in 1892, which was based on the 1891 Strowger designs. The original dials required complex operational sequences and development continued during the 1890s and early 1900s in conjunctions with improvements in switching technology.
In the 1950s, plastic materials were introduced in dial construction, replacing metal which was heavier and subject to higher wear.
Despite their lack of modern features, rotary phones occasionally find special uses. For instance, the anti-drug Fairlawn Coalition of the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C. persuaded the phone company to reinstall rotary-dial pay phones in the 1980s to discourage loitering by drug purchasers, since the dials could not be used to call dealers’ pagers.[4] They are also retained for authenticity in historic properties such as the U.S. Route 66 Blue Swallow Motel which date from an era of named exchanges and pulse dialling.
Rotary Dialer Free - Android Apps on Google Play
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.wellknown.rotarydialer&hl=en
Rotary Dialer on the App Store on iTunes
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rotary-dialer/id284926166?mt=8
BFL
Obviously, this pre-dates 'touch-tone' dialing, also called 'true-tone' by AT&T using DTMF, or even 'rotary' dialing.
The process would begin like this, you'd pick up your phone reciever, and hit the cradle a few times. This would cause a light on the central switchboard blink, which would get the operator's attention. You'd tell the operator that you wanted to place a long distance call to, say PEnnsylvania 6-5000. You'd hang up and wait for the call to be completed. The operator would then begin the process of building, by way of patch boards a physical cable that connected the caller to the called party. He/she would ring the next operator down the line and they would build that cable. Once completed, the operator would ring you back, and you'd pick up the phone and start talking.
Hard to believe, these days given how easy it is to make a phone call to just about anywhere on the planet.