1954 How to dial your phone by Bell System 

I’m looking for the bell system wishing song. I think it got deleted

Watching on Samsung galaxy with AT&T

I'm watching this tutorial on my At&t Samsung 8s phone....

Me

ASUS Zenfone 2 (refurbished) via Frontier FiOS 200 Mbps.

Watching on phones

...and in the palm of our hands on a phone

You're right because she's dead

@@Frankincensedjb123--Not necessarily. If she was 30 years old here she could be alive at age 96.

Only about 482,000 at present...

Reminds me of the giant prop cell phones (and now smartphones) that are in phone stores. Interestingly, I remember before cellphones, the AT&T or Sprint stores just had land lines. I remember when an AT&T store got one of the very first video phones. It was like a 16 color, 1 frame every 5 seconds display lol

It is only for long distance calls.

Me too.

I'm amazed how well they got the dialing action on that thing!

Then you should marry it.

Loud and clear conversations unlike the damn smartphones.

@@hectorfernando4445 You are right! I still have one, and it sounds like the other person is right in the room with you! Ans they were solid and unbreakable!

@@essessessesq Bakelite 😁

@@evanderosborne4531 Yes, a very strong early type of plastic!

It's because back then, Ma Bell actually owned the phone, and you leased it from them. Because they'd be responsible for fixing or replacing the phone if it broke (by sending a repair guy to your house), they had Western Electric build those things like freaking tanks. Making sure they didn't have to send someone out to service it made it worth the extra cash to overbuild them.

HenryBloggit dial service isn't coming to your city I don't think because this is from the 50s it's the 2017 now they have smart phones now and they have better service and technology!

MAN4U, you don't have much of a sense of humor, do you?

+Sam Potter it was not a human... AI replied!

HenryBloggit It's already come and gone, but I wonder when they'll start making cell phones with rotary dials.

Anonymous Anonymous This could be new for some people. It’s pretty obvious that this whole dial thing is a massive project so there could be some places still waiting to get it. I haven’t seen it in my town yet, but they might just roll it out in 2018:

Oh yes, I had forgotten about that. People couldn't just use zero willy-nilly. And color came into the world sometime in the 60s. Before that the world was almost entirely in black and white, so that's all that the color film would show, lol.

As someone not born in the USA, I remain very confused about whether "oh" or "zero" is the standard or common way of saying the digit zero in a telephone number. I had an idea that people said "zero", and was therefore interested to hear "oh" in this video. In Britain it has always been normal to say "oh", as in the phase "dial oh one for London" (now sadly obsolete after several changes to London telephone numbers to increase capacity).

@@ib9rt "oh" is the usual way to say "zero" in America. Although zero is not unheard of. However, it seems strange that the "prim and proper British" would take such a shortcut, lol.

@@ib9rt When I was a boy in the 1960s, we always said "oh." These days, I always say, "zero."

Or people who were not just reading a script!

Hahaha...i totally forgot about that...i used to do that all the time.!!!

I Remember Doing That!!

We used to dial SPACE00 & a weird tone would sound. And do prank calls & change our voices. One old prank was calling the drug store & asking if they had phillip morris in a can.( a tobacco) when they said yes, you said, well you better let him out! There also were 'dial a.....' phone numbers w/ pre recorded uplifting messages or what not.

I used to do that to payphones then watch as someone walking by would answer.

@@chenes6879 Oh my gosh...PAYPHONES! I miss those days. We still have one on a wall at our local hospital...don't work though🤭

When my dad answered and it was a wrong number, he very politely told the person they dialed a wrong number. And when the caller said "Oh! Sorry!" he'd say, "Oh, that's OK, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway!"

That's what she said.

We still have our old rotary phone.. it’s basically a museum piece now with my kids

Funny, that's what your prostate doctor says too! ;-)

pmailkeey yea we keep it for emergency, if the power goes out or whatnot

Tom Jacobs And earlier James Bond movies always needed Q to explain to James Bond the latest gadget and how it worked, but movies like Casino Royale had all kinds of new gadgets, but no one to explain to James Bond how they worked; he just used them without explanation. Times have changed.

If it's an iPhone it does. The 'manual' is built into the phone. Not a separate book.

Its called a rotary dial telephone, not a "Dial Disc TelePhone".

Tom Jacobs except for verizon

2018 phone doesn't come with the nessicairy cables

Well, there's no blue-haired Karens, if that's what you mean.

Is this the person to whom I am talking to ?

We are old enough to remember that laugh in routine, where did the time go? Her name was Miss Ernestine.

I got it 👍 funny!!!

Mr. Veedal on the line!

@@MrVato53 "Have I reached the party with whom I am speaking?"

you can still do that with a landline. I use and like my landline crystal clear audio and works during hurricanes. nypost.com/2017/05/04/why-nearly-46-percent-of-household-still-have-landlines/

90% of people have cordless phones. I have a landline rotary phone in my basement. I go deaf every time it rings.

I also have a rotary phone as well as cordless handsets

I've thought of creating an app for that :P

Milepost 484 best thing was the prank calls.

we still had a rotary dial phone on the wall in the 80's.

LOL you're funny! How long will it take for you to learn how to use the cell phone now? LOL

Yeah, they really should've posted this video on RU-vid when dial phones first came out.

Moshe Rabbeinu too funny!

As the soap commercial jingled, "People who like people / Like Dial."

Lololololol

😭🤣😂😅😂🤣😅🤣😂😂🤣😅😂😂😂😂😅😂😂🤣😂😂😂🤣😂😂😂😂🤣🤣😂😂🤣😂😂🤣😂😂😂😂🤣😂😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣🤣😂🤣😂awwww man I needed THAT ... thanks

Her entire figure? Must have been a huge phone

I once had a younger person that I worked with awhile back and someone mentioned that they had a dial phone, my co-worker wanted to know what kind of DOLL it was.

U must mean finger, and what a funny niece 😂 maybe I would've done the same 15 years ago

tech always eliminates jobs. eventually theyll be none left.

And never to dial someone, then when they answer, ask "Who's this?" The caller ought first identify himself or herself. Then ask, "may I speak to --?"

Anybody realise the first ever greeting to use on the phone was AHOY?!

Funny. Grandpa was onto something. "Being made into a phone employee for no pay" and now we're not employees but the actual product.

MrWildbill47 and 911

Right on. As well as common sense about many other things. I suspect you and I are close to the same age. Read my comment

An instructional video that talked down to people like they were children. Kids today know more about computers and phones than any of the older generation. Plus they're smarter.

@@ronaldmayle1823 Smarter? Lee Armey is convinced the younger generation cant even start a lawnmower. Fast food clerks cant make change. Videos show most dont know where continents or countrys are, or the capitols of US states. How many know how to use a LogLog Decitrig slide rule? (all of the tech things built last century were done with sliderule "computers"). How many KNOW if the answer is wrong on their calculator because they have an innate idea what the answer should be? Dont be so snippy LOL Back in 1954 people didnt really have phones yet.contrary to what you might think, ut was radically new technology for most people. In 1942 the house we lived in had JUST had electricity put in. There ware 2 outlets in the kitchen for Fridge (WOW we had one). One in the living room for a radio and that was it in a 9 room farmghouse - the bathroom was at the end of a 50ft walk out the back door.!! (There were no phone lines out thru the country. Farmers didnt even have the old wall hung crank phones.) PS in 1995 in Batesburg N.C. the local post offices were passing out FREE instruction sheets for people on how to use the new selfstick stamps. I KID YOU NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a bit easier to detect sarcasm back when you could actually hear someone's voice.

Why the hell would we use a slide rule anymore? You don't have to keep using obsolete methods just for the sake of stroking your own ego you know. Yours really starting to grasp at straws.

It really was like that. It was intrusive if you kept making the phone ring, especially since it was kind of loud.

OMG, I remember that too! I was in 1st grade (Minnesota) and they taught us how to call the fire department. The other kid would answer receiving phone and pretend to be the fire department. You can actually connect two old phones together with a battery. You don't get the dial tone or ability ring them, but the handset works just fine. The sample phones fully worked, which is way cool.

@@mlseim i think its the mics in series and the speakers in parallel

ditto it was such a cool thing for us

Yeah, and if you accidentally dropped it on your toe.... or your little sister... the pain was indescribable (but in different locations).

If you did, though, it meant you were doing something really fishy.

No but you could do a half dial if you slipped, then you had a wrong number and had to start all over again

Well not unless you had a really skinny butt.

Not unless you have hemorrhoids the size of an index finger.

@andolos Not necessarily.

@andolos andolos a faraday cage is hardly 'military grade insulation'. As a matter of fact, many older homes that have plaster, lathe, and chicken wire within the walls have a faraday cage built in. I've worked in many older homes where the owner's wifi routers wouldn't work due to the metals within the walls. This doesn't include devices in an underground basement as well. I do understand your concerns about EMP however. As a side note vaccum tubes are unaffected by EMP as well.

@andolos there's a big difference between radio and ionizing radiation friend. Completely different ends of the electromagnetic spectrum. All I'm saying is that if one has an older home with plaster ,lathe, and chicken wire within the walls, or a good basement, electronic items would be relatively safe from a pulse. Keep in mind as well, that Hollywood and reality dont go hand in hand with the facts all the time. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse_in_popular_culture

@andolos I am quite versed in where different forms of photon energy reside in the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves, for the most part, are fairly low energy. Generally speaking, a Faraday Cage will attenuate, if not completely block out most radio waves as well as most electromagnetic fields. Not only that, but most photon energy (radiation) in the electromagnetic spectrum is non-ionizing. Only extreme UV and smaller wavelengths are ionizing radiation. Just because the 'grid is fried' doesn't make the 'electronics in the basement useless'. That statement is laughable at best. There are thousands of people, myself included, that have alternate ways of generating electrical power off grid. It's not really all that hard to do to be honest. You do realize that an EMP is nothing more than electrical energy being dispersed in the atmosphere? There are nuclear, and non-nuclear sources of EMPs. A *LIGHTNING STRIKE* is considered an EMP. Static electricity discharge is considered an EMP. EMP's are generated in nature quite regularly. I've seen video of a car driving down the road, take a full lightning strike, and continue operating as if nothing happened. Same with aircraft flying through the air and underway. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm only pointing out that your statement of, "No it won't survive an emp. Emp attack fries anything electric.", isn't fully accurate. There are way to many variables to make that statement accurate. If you're speaking of an EMP caused by a nuclear explosion, the variables include: weapon yield, height of explosion, type of device, how electronic and electrical items are exposed to said EMP, what kind of shielding, if any, and so on. For starters, a good portion, if not the majority of phone lines in the US are buried and grounded to a good earth ground, meaning they would be completely unaffected by an EMP. Fiber optic lines would completely unaffected, as the medium for carrying the information is not metallic, but glass or in some cases, plastic. In the grand scheme of things, not all electronic infrastructure would be affected. Case in point. Starfish Prime. Starfish Prime only ruined a few hundred streetlights, 2 satellites, and phone system microwave link. That was all. It did set off some air raid sirens and burglar alarms as well.The *MAJORITY* of all electrical and electronic devices, including *PHONE LINES* still operated without issue after the detonation of Starfish Prime, as well as a few other high altitude tests in Operation Fishbowl and Hardtack. Furthermore, the Starfish Prime, and was a larger than expected EMP generation as well. Nothing else electrical in Hawaii or anywhere else was damaged. That's a far cry from "...Emp attack fries anything electric." If EMP were to destroy anything electric, the damage in Hawaii and throughout the Pacific during the test, would have been exponentially higher and more catastrophic but it wasn't. Now will a good portion of the electrical and electronic infrastructure in the US be damaged by an 'EMP'? Without question. Will an 'EMP' destroy everything electronic? No. Some of the 'grid' would still operate. Many cars and trucks will still operate without issue. Especially the ones running on CNG, propane, and diesel. Only vehicles with electronic fuel injection may experience problems. That all depends where they were stored when the EMP happened. Parked in a metal building or underground? More than likely unaffected. Vehicle without EFI and has a carburetor? Probably unaffected. But once again there are way too many variables to put into the equation to make an accurate estimate. A major, intentional EMP has never happened before over a major population center. If you're interested in a study on the matter, I found one completed for the people at ORNL (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) in Tennessee. Enjoy the read. It's a long one that states the points I've made in my earlier posts. Complete with pictures and diagrams I might add. www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/reliability/cybersecurity/ferc_meta-r-320.pdf

Don't tell me what to do. I actually think this is pretty amazing but when someone tells what to do all that wonder goes down the drain.

You were a God who worked for a monster.

A MALE telephone operator back then Nicholas?? That would have been as rare as a male cashier in a grocery store back then too!

@Nicholas Tulve, i'll bet you had many people surprised when they reached a male operator. I was a Directory Assistance operator for New York Telephone back in the 1970's, and many people couldn't believe that they were speaking to a man. When i started, there was probably about 8 guys working as operators. It was aggravating, but interesting, and i had a good salary and benefits for someone just out of high school!

I started in 1979 as a Long Distance Operator on a TSPS board. About a dozen of my coworkers came from “cord board.” (Illinois Bell)

@@hankaustin7091 "That would have been as rare as a male cashier in a grocery store back then too!" In the 1950s, at least where I lived, MOST cashiers were men. Women were expected to be housewives. (Unless they were unmarried, in which case they were expected to be elementary school teachers, nurses, telephone operators, or secretaries.)

No that's incorrect. That process started with the industrial revolution in the 18th century.

@bearasscreekfarms sameasabove Jobs come and go... that's part of life. It's nobody's fault.

You would prefer to ask an operator to connect you? it might make texting difficult

Perhaps you didn't read all of my words. Nestled comfortably in the very beginning of the statement are the words "one of" . This was meant to denote the fact that precision was never my intent, but rather the observation that with advancing technology comes job loss. That would be long winded and boring, however and as I'm sure you would agree most people have stopped reading by now so I won't go on...Bye

only with the advent of the cell phone

Last day of '52.

1957...right now I'm missing those days.

LOL!

It's not a bug, it's feature.

When we were kids, we figured out how to make two phones on the party line ring. Then we would listen in, trying not to laugh, to see how long it took to realize that neither had called the other.

I remember 4 digit phone numbers and party lines very well. If it was an emergency, you could ask the people to hang up so you could make your call.

😂😂😂

bmoremike I used to do that when I was bored at work, I would conference connect two different airline reservation agents together. Many were not the sharpest knives in the draw, quite funny listening to each try to find out where the other wanted to go, and then when the realized what was going on they would continue talk for 5 minutes about how their respective jobs sucked.

Finally someone with an interesting comment! That's amazing we still use those!

even I didn't know that, worked in 7 different dept.

Used them in the Army in 70's. 36C20

@@dcsmith5839 36C Poles and Holes. That MOS was housed at Brem's barracks at Ft Gordon when I was there in the 80s. I was 26Y SATCOM.

Yeah, especially overhead, but WHAT they are installing is fiber , not 24-gage copper

Phone booths through the 70's- - -

Same here. Pay phones could be very helpful if you lose your smartphone, or it's stolen, or for some reason is broken and look, there's a pay phone!! Nope, not anymore. They got rid of just about all of them.

Me too..

Nowdays, people destroy phonebooths and rip up or steal phone books. Sad! You could also find phonelines along the highways in case your car broke down and no rest area or town close by. It cost a dime to use a phonebooth until into the 70s when it became a quarter. It was 35 cents by the 80s. There are still phonebooths sparsely scattered in places, but you are luck if they are not damaged or too filthy to use.

It's condescending.

@Scott Adler You're absolutely right Scott. But today's generation says, "oooh I have new technology that works better" Actually these new smartphones are junk compared to a landline phone. For anyone who might be disagreeing with me, if a powerful storm comes through and destroys those cell phone towers, guess what? That's right, anyone with a smartphone will not have service. However, if someone happens to still have a landline phone, they will probably still have phone service. So much for all this new and great technology huh? Oh right, I forgot, you can play games on them. Big deal. I have a smartphone, so I'm in the same boat as everyone else. Unfortunately we never used our landline phone service so we ended up getting rid of it. This new technology that we have today, that we have to rely on friggin towers just to make calls, is ridiculous. If landline service still holds up better than cell service, then to me, cell service needs to hold up just as well.

Even today the phone operators know all the phone calls you do. I wouldn't be surprised if the Internet providers see every website you visit and search you enter.

and people think Facebook and the NSA are bad...

elgavilan2000 Or Windows 10 ;)

Was operator. Had to wear dresses. And handed out little blue pills to keep you sharp!

The internet had been made so the powers that be can keep an eye and ear on us all!

Tomorrow will bring teleportation

Tomorrow will bring calls from afar asking you to pay your overdue taxes with iTunes gift cards

Enslavement - endless servitude, and herd mentality. Past generations were much smarter. The only thing 90% of the current generation has going for it is lightning fast thumbs. There are a few outliers but they must feel very out of place.

This comment will be seen in 40 years by someone and they will be marveled at how simple our cellphones were back in these days.

I'm_OK millennials probably

@@SlavicUnionGaming True

Sounds like you never heard of the search function, or voice recognition.

Great comment. I actually L-edOL! 🤣😅😂

What is sad: Up through the 70s, technology was something useful as a tool. Nowdays, technology is over rated and not appriciated for its actual benefits. We have become lazy and addicted to technology. No more family time, no more morals, more health issues, and lack of face to face socializing. Technology is just a way to speed up consumerism which causes work to be more about enslavement for demand and blowing money instead of saving it.

And she has Betty White' hair style..

303 Nitzubishi she’s not a broad, she’s a hottie

l'd bone here

People would get so angry if you just stayed and listened. Hehehehe

Couple talking: "Aww you say it baby" "No you say it Darling" You: Hehe yeah say it Couple: .... *hang up*

Raises hand

You could unscrew the cover of the mouthpiece and take the speaker out and no one could hear you eavesdropping. Thank you JESUS for saving my soul.

I'm now 63 and we did it all the time L Ne.

Play? This is not a toy.

Ikr. This made me mad!!

tsntana its a joke...

@@strxberrygacha4437 Indeed it was. :)

tsntana wait, den yd u comment dat..

It was a menacing sound!

All thanks to The Twilight Zone! lol

Indeed, and that IS a fact. I remember most of the numbers from my youth. When I was an Operator 1981-1985, I could give you ALL of the area codes by heart. Now?? HA!

I was born in '65. My mom said that her father said to her when I was born, "Oh the things she will see." The truth in that is profound isn't it?

the dial tone is a different pitch now than the one in the piece. I haven't actually heard a dialling tone in years, though--no analogue phones

Just try getting an operator when you dial "O" now.

The dial tone is a steady buzz. The busy signal is intermittent at the same frequency. Pulsing is a busy line No way to text back then you just had to keep trying. If someone didn't want to talk they would take the bedroom phone and bury the receiver under a pillow so you could't hear the "off hook" signal

I must say that I haven't heard a busy signal in years because cell phones tend to go to voicemail when the person you're calling is on another call.

@@Andrea-xs4ny Most landline phones have voicemail now as well

Same

Only a kid in the 2010 era will need classes now lol

michelformika watch the movie.

Maybe have a drink first. It is complicated.

Honestly, for the people back in the day who were use to just being transferred by the operator this must have seemed pretty complicated.

You ain't supposed to. If your head is swimming, consider yourself successfully mind****ed. The idea is to get you to submit like sheep to the NWO system, as in, "Please, please, somebody help me with this newfangled complicated "dialing" phone! Why can't we just continue to pick up the phone and have Sarah the operator say "number please"? I didn't need no stinking' number so long as it was not out of town. All I had to say was "Sarah, get me Sheriff Taylor", then next thing I know, I hear Andy Griffith answering the phone." (But sometimes Andy had to say "OK Sarah, you can hang up now".)

@@nonelost1 If you have a smartphone you can just program frequently dialed numbers into your phone so all you have to do is go to that persons name in your contact and press call. If you need to call someone where you do not know the number you can google it.

Is your refrigerator running?

Is Semore Butts there?

@@bfun4615 Are you standing Sir/Ma'am? Can you see your feet?

Calling twice and asking if Mr/Mrs xxxxx is home? Then calling again in 5 minutes to say this is Mr/Mrs xxxxx; have I had any calls? This all stopped with caller ID. The giggles this gave tweens years ago. Yes, I was one of them with all the others listed.

@@terryshilo6750 Yep, same here! Also calling someone and then having a convo with someone else on an extension phone, and when the person you called answers, ignore them and keep talking to other person. Then ask why they called you! Or try to tell them they are on your party line! 🤣 Oops! Hope you weren't one of the random #'s we did that to! 😂

😍😍😍😍😍

Lol!!!!

Number please?

Mayberry was a little behind the times.

Yea,dude, was just thinking about Sarah, the operator at the telephone exchange on Andy Griffith Show :))

As long as we still have landlines, you'll always have it. :)

Still, the lines are getting fully digital to the house(switched or VoIP). A small modem in the house or in the pole simulates a classic telephone system to be compatible with touchtone or pulse dial devices.

mafarmerga Why?

@@ElizaHamilton1780 Why? Partly for sentimental reasons, partly because it still works and it looks so retro. I just had a three year old digital phone die on me but my old black bakelite beast still works after 50 years. To be honest it is a bedside table phone that I really only use for answering incoming calls, it has been over a decade since I have used it to dial out.

@@ElizaHamilton1780 They work when the power goes out and as the have no batteries you'll never need to switch when your battery is dying. Also most people have a few lying around - not that we tend to have more than one plugged in.

Have a 9 and a 0 in your number was like being a green bubble today. (Don't @ me bros I'm a green bubble too.)

Did you tell your GF when you came out of the closet?

Kinda opened myself up for that one huh? Hilarious.

We never had those really long cords we would see on American movies and TV, at least not until a long time later.

Our phone was mounted on the kitchen wall. NA7-9185.

Mike R could you just imagine young people today having to deal with that concept today? I have an old crank operated wall phone mounted in my front hall and more than one young person has assumed it was fake because it is missing the dial as they point out to me! I have chuckled every time and then have to explain how it worked!

In French, it's "compose" instead of "dial."

My family had a party line when we moved from the city to the country near my grandparents. Before then, I’d never used one. That was in 1982! We didn’t get a private line until 1984.

@@annek1226 My Great-Aunt Slim (RIP) used to have one (disconnected by the time I was growing up) and I always thought it was the strangest thing...when my Grandmother (RIP) later on told me how those phones worked it blew my mind! Btw, my Great-Aunt Ruth (RIP) worked as an operated for Bell Systems way back in the day...she would've been one of those ladies saying "number please" and if you had an ancestor living in Pennsylvania, they may well have spoken to her on numerous occasions when placing a phone call! 😅

@@HollywoodF1 When I moved to Paris in 62, it took me months to realize the French telephone greeting was "N'e quitter pas" ("Don't quit (the line))" all slurred into one rapid syllable, dating from when the phones were still new and the service unreliable.

And that same year I went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and I saw my first push-button phone and I also saw what would become the first video screen with phone.. I guess Bell was working on that at that time, but all we thought wouldn't it be cool to see somebody and you're talking to them? And it happened...

ha same here : )

I thought they had dial phones before this.

The video says that before 1954 you would pick up the phone and tell the operator the phone number you needed, the operator would be the one to connect your call.

@@julienielsen3746 Depends on where you lived. Most city's had dial service in the 1920's. Out in the country it didn't arrive until the 1960's. Our phone in the early 60's didn't have a dial and we were on a party line.

@@bobcosgrove3235 Telephone history for all: www.props.eric-hart.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Telephone-History-Bell-System.jpg Note the dial phones BEFORE 1954.

j.denino57 "Interesting, before 1954 there was no dial on the phone." My dad was an "equipment man" for West Coast Telephone Company (which became part of General Telephone & Electronics, which became Verizon, all during his 40-year career). When I was a kid he converted two old, non-working "candlestick" telephones into table lamps, and when you lifted the receiver (which was separate from the microphone on these old models) the light would come on. One of them had a dial and one did not. These phones were from the 1930s, I believe, although the design -- including dials -- dated back to the '20s. Some larger cities had dial phones well before 1954.

Yeah,you hit someone on the head and fuck them up good. LOL 😂😂 😂😂 😂

Nope. Hard plastic infused with metal made in China 🤣 told that is was made here in america which was a lie

@@admeliora4822 Nope to your nope. China was RED China then. No trade at all.

And she also forgot to say please like, and comment.

Don't forget to smash that subscribe button!

Or this spider will crawl into face when you sleep! :D

RADIUM CLOCK yes you rented your phone until late 70’s or early 80’s

It's been 66 years and I still remember the phone number we had.. Pontiac (PO) 3910.

@Just Looking Pink and blue too!

In places where there are fewer old people, and it's a neighborhood moistly built since the Bell System breakup some of the local switches may no longer be equipped for it

I wonder if you could learn to mimic the digital sounds the different keys make.

Depends on what you mean by "mimic," Dave - if you mean by using your voice, then no - not humanly possible. The touchtone sounds of a telephone are actually made up of two tones simultaneously transmitted - an "undertone" and "overtone". The undertone was a frequency assigned across each of the four rows of buttons (for example, the numbers "1," "2," and "3" have the same undertone while "4," "5," and "6" has another, etc.). The overtone frequency is individual to each number. When a button is pressed, both tones are generated simultaneously; this ensured that the phone system would not "misunderstand" which button was being pressed (due to static, voltage changes, etc.) as it would have to match both under- and over-tones to decipher the number being pressed. Since the human voice can't mimic two frequencies at the same time, it can't replicate the touchtones. Using another device, such as a computer, tone generator, musical instrument, etc. though? Absolutely can do it. @@fondriest777

thegalaxybeing The fifth word from the end -" locals" should actually be spelled " locales". People in this day are far to anal and your spelling of that word would frustrate the dog piss out of them. Don't believe me? Go to any fast food drive through and say something like this- " I want a number two but I don't want the fries". Try it- it's absolutely incomprehensible to " modern man". We've all been trained to not buck the norm. And it's a huge shame!

Wow - let me try that again... it made so much sense when I was trying to write it... David, what I meant was that the human vocal cords cannot emulate the sounds of the touch tones on a telephone - this was done on purpose so that you wouldn't accidentally "dial" while you were speaking with someone in a phone conversation. To clear up the tone generation (Geez, I screwed that one as well) - each button has a unique tone made up of two frequencies - there is one frequency for each row of numbers and one frequency for each column of numbers. When a button is pressed, the two tones corresponding and assigned to that row and column make up the "tone" that is heard and deciphered by the automatic switching system. Because it is a combination of the row and column of each button, this produces a unique tone for each number thereby making it almost impossible for the phone system not to understand the button being pressed. I never said they couldn't be emulated.. that's what the infamous black boxes of the 1980's were for, and the birth and rise of the name "phone phreaks" (I hung out with quite a few of them back in the day...). You just can't emulate them with your voice. @David Roberts

ATLBrysco thanks I did not know.

Jimmy M accurate

Yup, self-isolating right now.

@@lixloon I think the whole country will be locked down, mandatory 'self-isolating' , even apparently healthy people could be carrying it, spreading it unknowingly

Enjoy

Not the case with all people my age, I know many people my age that actually collect rotary phones like I do. I am 16.

We actually carried around pocket size notebooks with nothing but phone numbers

Phwew glad she showed me how to write it down, I was getting pretty tired of carving telephone numbers into my flesh with a popsicle stick!

Cristofer Chan-Imak People didn't know what to make of the letters mixed with the numbers. When I go to another country I don't immediately know what the numbers mean or how they are usually grouped when locals say them. Personally, I thought it was unnecessarily complicated to use one with both a zero and an O but I guess they wanted to show a difficult case. I suppose they thought using a word rather than all numbers made it easier to recall, even if that made it harder to dial. Let's see, a W would be....

Like this....867-5309

so how do you text?

This video made me wonder when "zero" became common parlance, in the US at least. Gonna look it up. On my phone.

It really could have given quite a lot of clarity to the explanation had they differentiated between ohs and zeros

Yeah, I can't believe the instructions didn't use "zero," since there already is a "oh" in the alpha rotary.

My phone is over 65 years old and it works perfectly. I had the cover off before trying it out (to make sure everything looked undamaged & reasonably clean). Anyway, the the date 1949 appears on almost every part inside, which means it likely hadn't any major part replacement. Also, up until the late 70's or so, the phones were provided by the phone company. If someone had a non-working phone, the phone company would come out and repair or replace it.

I have a Western Electric wall phone in my house that is over 50 years old. It still works perfectly if it was connected to a line. We had to disconnectic when we got DSL service. Those old phones used a coil and capacitor system to make the duplex communication work on one line. They wreak havoc with megahertz data when it is on the same line. The old phones were powered by the phone line at about 30 volts. They would work even if the power went off. The phone company's central office used DC batteries to power them.

@@richarddixon70 It is 50 volts/nominal 48 volts with a 110volt pulsed DC ring voltage.

our phone had an adjustment on the bottom. I think all standard 500 sets did.

Most Western Electric(Bell System) phones had a ringer volume control. On desk phones it was usually on the lower right you might have to pick the phone up and turn it over to get a finger on it good enough to move it. On wall phones it was usually along the bottom. By the time they got to touch tone(push-button) they had gone to a small plastic slide switch, on the right side. General Telephones were made by Automatic Electric and they often had it in back along the bottom. Automatic Electric also had a less pleasant more "clangey" ringer sound

In the early 70s, we had a party line with a nosy neighbor!

One question though... why did you block the numbers as if we can still dail it today?

Same here. When I was a kid I couldn't use the phone either so I soldered a bunch of discarded blasting wire together, strung it through some tall trees, & made a telegraph system to my friend's house 2 blocks away. Learning morse code was easy then - I'm stupid now. Must be something in the water.

Growing up, my family was on a party line- one of the first forms of social media!

Had forgotten that 👍