DThomasC
Senior Member
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.