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

Cougar

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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.

Ha! To drift further afield, Bell Labs had a couple of guys who discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (and got the Nobel Prize for it), thus nailing shut the coffin of Hoyle, et al's steady state theory and providing the strongest support for the Big Bang, which continues today as the best explanation for the evolution of our universe.

Ten or twenty billion years ago*, something happened -- the Big Bang, the event that began our universe. Why it happened is the greatest mystery we know. That it happened is reasonably clear. - Carl Sagan

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* Best current estimate is about 13.8 billion years
 

davismanLV

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When the hackers convention came to Mandalay Bay every year, I'd leave my phone locked in my truck. Too many servers and bartenders ended up looking a photos from their phones on a customers phone with them saying, "Nice boobs!" Not that I had any boob pics but..... you know what i mean.
 

Quantum Strummer

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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.

Right-o. A hack was something you could take pride in. A kludge is still a quick & dirty thing to be got rid of ASAP…except when you're moved off a project before you can clean it up and it remains in place for ages, annoying you all over again every time you think of it. :)

-Dave-
 

walrus

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Here's a random question that I was thinking about because of this thread:

On your rotary dial, did you take your finger out of the hole after every number you dialed, or let it "ride"?

I always let my finger ride for the lower numbers, but took it out for dialing a higher number - I just couldn't hang on when dialing "0"...

walrus
 

Nuuska

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I took my finger off.


BUT - back to original - was the person listening your call and taking time or was there some automated clock that alarmed some poor clerk to tell "more money" - and was the "more money paid - signal" then approved and whatever.



Back here in 50-60:s when we made a "long-distance-call" - those were the ones that were outside our own region pre-number ( is that a correct expression ? ) - anyway - we had to dial state central and ask them to connect us to number so&so - then wait - wait - wait - until somebody in the other end answered - this could take hours if nobody was home - I guess that they tried every so many minutes again . . .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-p_Wa13fk8
 

The Guilds of Grot

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Ha! To drift further afield, Bell Labs had a couple of guys who discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation (and got the Nobel Prize for it), thus nailing shut the coffin of Hoyle, et al's steady state theory and providing the strongest support for the Big Bang, which continues today as the best explanation for the evolution of our universe.


Just to clarify, this took place at one of the two Bell Lab Holmdel locations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holmdel_Horn_Antenna
 

GAD

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With hacker being the "positive" term, "cracker" was the negative term that never sort of caught on.

A great read on all of this from the early days is Clifford Stoll's The Cukoo's Egg: The_Cuckoo's_Egg
 

GAD

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I took my finger off.


BUT - back to original - was the person listening your call and taking time or was there some automated clock that alarmed some poor clerk to tell "more money" - and was the "more money paid - signal" then approved and whatever.



Back here in 50-60:s when we made a "long-distance-call" - those were the ones that were outside our own region pre-number ( is that a correct expression ? ) - anyway - we had to dial state central and ask them to connect us to number so&so - then wait - wait - wait - until somebody in the other end answered - this could take hours if nobody was home - I guess that they tried every so many minutes again . . .


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-p_Wa13fk8


I'm not sure about the mechanics of the pay phone timing out, but in the old OLD days you'd have to pick up the phone and have the operator ask you "number please?" In the US the numbers are broken out as follows:

(area code) exchange (NXX) - number. Thus, (201) 647-1776. Before those days, you would pick up the phone and say something like PLainfield 7, 1234. That would mean 757-1234 because the P is on the 7 and the L is on the 5. It was really quite a logical system but it just didn't scale along with population growth. If you were within the exchange area already, you could just say 1234. IF it was a really small town you could just say, "Mary, please". :)

As a fun aside, my wife's grandmother had one of the first phones in her town and her number was xxx-0013 because they doled them out in order. I always thought that was cool.

BTW, all of the logic of the system was pretty much destroyed when people sued to keep their cell phone numbers between carriers. That gets far deeper into how the numbers are routed, but as someone who designs large schemes of things regularly, that was a sad day for me, even though I've reaped the rewards of number portability.

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.
 

Stuball48

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Here's a random question that I was thinking about because of this thread:

On your rotary dial, did you take your finger out of the hole after every number you dialed, or let it "ride"?

I always let my finger ride for the lower numbers, but took it out for dialing a higher number - I just couldn't hang on when dialing "0"...

walrus
Took my finger off
 

SFIV1967

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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.
There are great old videos about it!



Ralf
 

walrus

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My grandmother lived in a small town and had a party line! It was always a trip listening to her talk to someone who was actually looking for a neighbor!

walrus
 

adorshki

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I took my finger off.


BUT - back to original - was the person listening your call and taking time or was there some automated clock that alarmed some poor clerk to tell "more money" - and was the "more money paid - signal" then approved and whatever.
AS GAD said, originally it was always a real live person.
The advent of tone-dialing and computerized switching enabled automated timing and the "voice" became automated, even at pay phones.
Who I pitied was the lady who sat by the mic with the little gong saying "At the sound of the tone the time will be...."
 

GAD

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Here's a random question that I was thinking about because of this thread:

On your rotary dial, did you take your finger out of the hole after every number you dialed, or let it "ride"?

I always let my finger ride for the lower numbers, but took it out for dialing a higher number - I just couldn't hang on when dialing "0"...

walrus

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

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.

When pushbutton phones because the norm, you had to pay more for DTMF (dual-tone multi-frequency) service, so the phones came with a pulse/DTMF switch so you could use them on the cheaper service. If you pressed the number 5, it would simulate hitting the hook five times.

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.

It's just like young people not knowing how music really sounds because they listen to streamed MP3s through crappy Apple ear-pods. You should have seen my daughter's face when I let her listen to her favorite music via FLAC through my Grace 903 and Senheisser HD580s. She now has the HD580s and listens through her Apogee Duet. I got a pair of HD650s. :)
 

GAD

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AS GAD said, originally it was always a real live person.
The advent of tone-dialing and computerized switching enabled automated timing and the "voice" became automated, even at pay phones.
Who I pitied was the lady who sat by the mic with the little gong saying "At the sound of the tone the time will be...."

If you have a ham radio you can still listen to her brother on 10.000 MHz.
 

Stuball48

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My grandmother lived in a small town and had a party line! It was always a trip listening to her talk to someone who was actually looking for a neighbor!

walrus[/QUOTE
Got a phone when I was 14-party line and five other families on that line. When the phone rang, it rang in the other four homes on the same party line. You had a certain ring for your home-ours was two long rings and a short-a pause-then repeat two longs and a short.
Really the beginning of facebook-everybody "listened in" on your conversations. Your neighbors knew all about what was going on.
You could hear that "click when someone picked up and was listening to your conversation.
A great time to make up and start a rumor--you knew it would spread.
 

adorshki

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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.

Which reminds me, why are they still called phones when really they're tiny little TV's?
Jacks of all trades and masters of none.
Dick Tracy was right.

dick-tracy-iphone-watch-598x426.jpg
 

SFIV1967

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Back to Nuuska's original question. I didn't find anything how this worked within the call itself. But there is a great video explaining how a normal long distance call worked and how the operator knew how much money you have to pay and paid. I can only assume the coin control circuit showed a light to the operator once the money was used and she switched into the call to tell you to deposit more.

A long distance call is explained from minute 31:25 to 37:60 and shows what the operator did with the cords on the switch board.

Also a more detailed explanation between minute 25:00 and 31:25.

Cool to watch at least for me!



Ralf
 
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walrus

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Yes, that was cool, Ralf!

Reminds of when I used be able to actually use the phone in my office. I simply don't have the time to figure the new one out. I'm making calls with it, and ignoring the other 5,000 things it can do.

walrus
 

fronobulax

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Grew up with a rotary only, no pulse cause it wasn't a thing yet, phone on a party line.

In those days the phone company owned everything including the handsets and wiring. My grandfather had worked for Western Electric (who made equipment for the phone company). He was perfectly capable of installing an extension phone without paying for installation or subsequent rental. But we were always cautioned never to make long distance calls from the pirate extension. I was a party line and he could not get the part that identified the source of a call so a long distance call from the pirate phone was billed to line 1 on the party line (which was not us, but could lead to detection).
 

GAD

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Yes, that was cool, Ralf!

Reminds of when I used be able to actually use the phone in my office. I simply don't have the time to figure the new one out. I'm making calls with it, and ignoring the other 5,000 things it can do.

walrus


"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone."

~ Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of the C++ programming language


And that was probably 20 years ago!
 
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