. . . and the operator says forty cents more for next three minutes . . .

Nuuska

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Hello

Heard Sylvia's Mother in radio - I have never used public phone in US - how did it work back then? Was there a voice cutting in telling you have to pay more to continue?
 

Stuball48

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In the mid 60s my college dormitory had a couple pay phones on each floor. The phones had three coin slots--nickel, dime, and quarter. All local calls (girls' dorms) were a dime. But if you had great hand cordination and "timing" you could drop a nickel in and immediately hit the coin return and phone would accept the nickel for local call. Folks have always tried to outsmart the "system."
 

Nuuska

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Hello

Outsmarting system was fun - imagine my joy when I discovered that a finnish 10 penny coin was exact match for german 50 pfennig coin - so about 10x gain, while those days 1 DM was about 2 FIM. So next trip I took a small bag full of finnish coins to use in germany.


Back to your past system - was that voice cutting in a real person or automatic recording? More details, please.
 

rampside

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My wife was once, one of those real person lovely voices. So was my aunt. According to my wife, my aunt was the best of them all (best voice and fastest hands) and full blooded Finn to boot!:smile:
 

walrus

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A real person at first, then later if I remember right, automated.

It was called "phreaking" when you fooled the phone with a simulation of the sound of coins. The beginning of the "hacker" culture...

walrus
 

dreadnut

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Fun song!

Yes, long distance from a telephone booth was pay-as-you-go, with live operator assistance. And it wasn't cheap, you needed a pocket full of coinage.

The Martin Jim Croce memorial guitar had a 1973 US dime inlaid at the 12th fret, inspired by words from his song "Operator:" "you can keep the dime"
 

chazmo

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A real person at first, then later if I remember right, automated.

It was called "phreaking" when you fooled the phone with a simulation of the sound of coins. The beginning of the "hacker" culture...

walrus

I think I agree with that Walrus... Though I suspect making slugs to fool vending machines and pay phones preceded "phreaking" [thanks, I never heard that term before!], making the coin sound was definitely more of a hacker-like activity.
 

richardp69

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Didn't realize there were so many "criminals" on this site. Oh, the things we all did (me included) to save a few cents back in the day.
 

GAD

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Phreaking wasn't simulating the sounds of coins - it was simulating the tones that could manipulate the digital switching systems back when they used in-band signaling. This was famously done by John Draper with a Cap'n Crunch (a breakfast cereal in the US) toy whistle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper.

BTW, if you've ever seen the hacker magazine 2600, it's named after the frequency that the Cap'n Crunch whistle produced: 2600Hz.
 
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chazmo

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Awesome! Been working in computers for over 30 years (quite a bit of it in telephony), but never heard this stuff! :)
 

walrus

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I always loved the Cap'n Crunch story! I've told it to my students for years. They always ask "how did he think to blow the whistle into the phone?". That's simply what guys like Draper did!

I wish I knew when being "hacker" became a bad thing. I still have my copy of Steven Levy's book "Hackers" - it's about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. Early '80's classic. Being called a hacker used to be a compliment.

https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Levy/dp/1449388396

walrus
 

walrus

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"Phreaking", from the usual source:

Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term phreak is a sensational spelling of the word freak with the ph- from phone, and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. Phreak, phreaker, or phone phreak are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking.
The term first referred to groups who had reverse engineered the system of tones used to route long-distance calls. By re-creating these tones, phreaks could switch calls from the phone handset, allowing free calls to be made around the world. To ease the creation of these tones, electronic tone generators known as blue boxes became a staple of the phreaker community, a group of people that included future Apple Inc. cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
The blue box era came to an end with the ever-increasing use of computerized phone systems, which sent dialing information on a separate, inaccessible channel. By the 1980s, much of the system in the US and Western Europe had been converted. Phreaking has since become closely linked with computer hacking.[SUP][1][/SUP] This is sometimes called the H/P culture (with Hstanding for hacking and P standing for phreaking).[SUP][citation needed]

walrus


[/SUP]
 

Brad Little

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On an only slightly related topic, area codes were assigned according to expected usage, not geographically. Because on dial phones, higher numbers kept circuits open longer, they used more electricity, denser populations got lower numbers. Sounds trivial, but with millions of calls it added up. Hence, NYC got 212 (numbers staring of ending with 1 were reserved for phone company use), LA 213 and Chicago 312.
 

GAD

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On an only slightly related topic, area codes were assigned according to expected usage, not geographically. Because on dial phones, higher numbers kept circuits open longer, they used more electricity, denser populations got lower numbers. Sounds trivial, but with millions of calls it added up. Hence, NYC got 212 (numbers staring of ending with 1 were reserved for phone company use), LA 213 and Chicago 312.

And NJ got 201 because we invented the thing. :) Bell Labs was in Murray Hill NJ right down the street from where my dad worked. I was pissed when they split up the NJ area code and we went from 201 to 973 (and then 908).
 
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Grassdog

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I wish I knew when being "hacker" became a bad thing. I still have my copy of Steven Levy's book "Hackers" - it's about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc. Early '80's classic. Being called a hacker used to be a compliment.

https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Levy/dp/1449388396

walrus


And by derivation the term "Hack" now used to depict jury-rigging or improvising something to be effective as a quick solution to a problem.

You guys are way smarter than me. I'm just a banker.
 

chazmo

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And by derivation the term "Hack" now used to depict jury-rigging or improvising something to be effective as a quick solution to a problem.

You guys are way smarter than me. I'm just a banker.
Back in the day, at least in the computer manufacturing business, a "hack" was an elegant, temporary work-around to a problem. The term "kludge" was probably just an industry-insider thing, but that was the awful, ugly, temporary work-around. As far as I know, there never was a "kludger" term for what ultimately became the meaning of "hacker" (as in negative connotations). A "hack" was not a negative thing. Creative hacking was something highly prized back in the day of discrete circuitry. Kludges were frowned upon unless they were *extremely* temporary.
 

Brad Little

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And NJ got 201 because we invented the thing. :) Bell Labs was in Murray Hill NJ right down the street from where my dad worked. I was pissed when they split up the NJ area code and we went from 201 to 973 (and then 908).
Interesting, though electrically 201 is higher use than 212 because of the 0 being a longer open circuit.
 
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