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

DThomasC

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I have been known to try and force the dial to turn faster because it was SUCH a long wait.

One of my first hacks was to modify the governor in a dial phone so that it was faster. I found I could go almost 2x normal speed and everything still worked.

BTW, the way the dial worked, at least on the later revs (don't know about earlier) was that it was a pulse system. You could simulate using a dial on a push-button phone by using the hangup-switch (hook). You can see in old movies where they would pick up the receiver and tap the hook to get the operator. Well, if you tap the hook five times, it was the same as dialing the number five. You could actually dial the phone using this method.

They were always like that, counting pulses. As a project for an electronics class in college I made phone dialer. It had push buttons, but pulsed the line to make the call. It was incredibly stupid and useless, but the teacher seemed impressed...

BTW, young people don't know this, but phone service used to sound GOOD. The introduction of VoIP, digitalization, and compression has absolutely ruined call quality. People have now become accustom to crappy phone service as the norm. Between distortion, latency, crosstalk, and echo, using the phone has become an absolute nightmare for me because in the old days I could complain about any of that stuff and there would be a truck on my street in no time. Now it's all just part of the experience.

Sing it brother. Bell used to spend real money trying to make phones sound good. By comparison, phones today are garbage (as phones.) I'm constantly asking people to repeat themselves. I'm not sure, but I think it might actually be getting worse.
 

Grassdog

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Where it got really fun was with something called party lines where everyone on the street would share a single phone circuit. The phone would ring in everyone's house, but it would ring once for the first house, twice for the second house, and so-on. You could pick up the phone in your house and listen to people in other houses talking. It was a gossip gold-mind.

I'm on a party line
Wondering all the time
Who's on the other end

Is she big, is she small
Is she a she at all
Who's on my party line

Opening track from Face to Face, The Kinks, 1966
 

Nuuska

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Oh - the old telephones - they used to come in all kind forms. Here are two that I have.


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I have not watched that video yet - but will do later today - first morning walk with The Dog !!!


Over here we have quite good sound quality in mobile phones - nothing to complain. Wonder how much operator has to do with it.
 

MLBob

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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."

Remember doing this at school, but I always used a strip of cardboard that was about 6" long in the dime slot while I dropped the nickel and hit the coin return. Don't remember who showed me, but it worked. :tongue:
 

Stuball48

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Remember doing this at school, but I always used a strip of cardboard that was about 6" long in the dime slot while I dropped the nickel and hit the coin return. Don't remember who showed me, but it worked. :tongue:
You were probably in an engineering school-we were not deep thinkers at Austin Peay. We did have a great "chant" at football and basketball games though--"Let's Go Peay!"
 
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