drrrrrrrrrr-clickclickclickclick drrrrrrrrr-clickclick drrrrrrrrrr-clickclickclickcli

[AndyJWest]

Didn't want to drag the US Politics thread off-topic, but I thought that Rockin Robbins and Oberon might appreciate this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh9mVBTcc8k

[propbeanie]

Ah yesh, I remember them well... Our home phone was much noiser than that, and actually "clicked" as it "rebounded". You could hear the pulses on the line. Good times. Good times...

Had to wait another forty years for them to come back... but using bluetooth?...

[Onkel Neal]

I used to be so impatient I would force the dial back around instead of letting it turn on its own.

[Oberon]

That's brilliant! :yeah: I wonder how they got that to work? Bluetooth or the device touch ability that my phone has said something about but I've not really understood it (something about being able to transfer stuff across if two devices are next to each other, can only presume it's some kind of extremely local connection).

They had quite a bit of weight to them too, those old Bakelite phones, but the receiver made a nice clunk when you put it back down, or if the call had not gone so well, slammed it back down. You can't really slam a mobile down, or a cordless phone...the price of technology I guess. :haha:

[fumo30]

Man, such a lovely gadget!:yep:

I kind a miss those old wire telephones. No dead batteries, they lasted forever and many beautiful designs were available.

[AVGWarhawk]

Ah yes...the old way of communicating. I recall having to dial a number to get the exact time. Another number for weather. And yet another number to check on school closings due to snow. We were kicking it when we got a new Slimline Touchtone! Sheesh....we have come a long way.

[Gargamel]

It's just a rotary encoder on a spring with a stop, attached to an arduino with a BT chip. I got all the components, minus the spring, on my parts rack in front of me. :).

I do have a couple unused mouse traps, I could use those springs. I'm afraid the dial may take your finger off though Neal.

[vienna]

Ah yes...the old way of communicating. I recall having to dial a number to get the exact time. Another number for weather. And yet another number to check on school closings due to snow. We were kicking it when we got a new Slimline Touchtone! Sheesh....we have come a long way.

Not to forget other "Dial-A-" services: Dial-A-Prayer, Dial-A-Joke, Dial-A-Poem, etc. Apart from the dial phones themselves, what I miss are the old phone numbers where the first two characters were letters, usually the first two letters of a location; growing up in San Francisco, you could tell where a number was generally located in the city by the two letter designation: MA=Market (Downtown SF), PO=Portrero (Portrero District), and so on. There were even some designations for specific services: if you wanted to call a Yellow Cab (a bit of a luxury in the 1950s), the number was TU5-1234, with the TU standing for "Tuxedo". Somehow, area codes just don't have the same 'human feel' as those old neighborhood letter codes...




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[fumo30]

Anybody remember chat lines that were a type of precursor of todays web forums?

They were initially pretty polular and going was chaotic especially at weekend night times. Lot of linetrolls disturbing chatting, but if i don't remember, wrong there were kinda moderation too kicking the trolls out of the line and also private lines for decent people wanting good conversation.

[Gargamel]

Anybody remember chat lines that were a type of precursor of todays web forums?

They were initially pretty polular and going was chaotic especially at weekend night times. Lot of linetrolls disturbing chatting, but if i don't remember, wrong there were kinda moderation too kicking the trolls out of the line and also private lines for decent people wanting good conversation.

Check out the AMC show "Halt and catch fire" The second season is all about that, and it's pretty good.

[fumo30]

Check out the AMC show "Halt and catch fire" The second season is all about that, and it's pretty good.

Thanks Gargamel.:salute: I'll check that out.

[Platapus]

Long distance phone calls have become so automated that really the concept of long distance phone calls has fallen by the wayside. People make long distance phone calls just like local phone calls. I doubt if the younger generation even understands that at one time there was a difference.

Here is an audio clip of how people made long distance phone calls in 1949

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfjwvGREiJA

Notice that it takes about 2 minutes just to make the connection. Interesting listening.

Anyone remembering Dialing Tools? It was a stylus, usually with a mechanical pencil at one end and a ball at the other end (where an eraser would be on a more traditional pencil). This ball was used to physically operate the dial without either breaking a nail or after long days, getting a blister on the finger.

Kinda weird that someone had to invent a tool to use a dial when the dial was designed to be used by hand. But that's the difference between making one phone call a week and hundreds per day.

[vienna]

The above post reminds me of a very popular doge used by some people who would travel and wanted to let those at home know they had arrived safely at their destination; they would dial the operator and ask to make a person-to-person call; person-to person calls meant the caller wanted to connect only to a specific person; if the person specified was not available to take the call, there was no charge for the call; as in the recording in the above post, back in the day, you pretty much heard every bit of the process involved in making the call. For example, say you were a college student at a faraway college and, after the holidays you wanted to let your family know you arrived safely back at school; you have the operator make the person-to person call and give some fictitious name for a receiving party; they ring your family's house and when asked if the requested party was at home, the family member would say "No, that person isn't here". Your family knows you're safe and the call was free...



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