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[fumo30]

Man, such a lovely gadget!

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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...




<O>

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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

[fumo30]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

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

Thanks Gargamel. 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



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.